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BASIC

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Bheise

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Ok...Im no programmer....BAck many years ago when I was in High school (88-91) I can recall times in class when I would go through a whole period or two of doing nothing but writing a BASIC program in my notebook while the teacher rambled on about Algebra, English, etc....but since then (91) , I cant say Ive done much with it....I can however, in my heart believe, that BASIC lasted longer than most other "OS's" and is was used in its different forms among various platforms more than current Win verisons ever were...
Of course, this rambling has no vital proof as I am not a programmer and may be proven wrong, but I believe it to be an almost vital OS for most users, wheter they were IBM lovers, Apple, etc...

Brian
 
Basic was pretty much the first program written for the MITS Altair computer in 1975. Until the advent of CP/M several years later, Disk Basic was the only "operating system" available for the Altair.

This was true for several other systems from around that era.

Even when CP/M came out, BASIC was the preferred language for years and years.

Then came machines like the Apples, Ataris, TIs, Commodores and, eventually, the PC - all of which had BASIC built in.

In short, I think I agree. BASIC had a lot to do with the PC revolution and it had a very long life in early machines.

Erik
 
Re: BASIC

"Bheise" Wrote in message:

Brian,

> Ok...Im no programmer....BAck many years ago when I was in
> High school (88-91) I can recall times in class when I would go
> through a whole period or two of doing nothing but writing a
> BASIC program in my notebook while the teacher rambled on
> about Algebra, English, etc....but since then (91) , I cant say Ive
> done much with it....I can however, in my heart believe, that
> BASIC lasted longer than most other "OS's" and is was used in
> its different forms among various platforms more than current
> Win verisons ever were...

> Of course, this rambling has no vital proof as I am not a
> programmer and may be proven wrong, but I believe it to be an
> almost vital OS for most users, wheter they were IBM lovers,
> Apple, etc...

You must also remember that BASIC was just about available for
every microcomputer too. I don't think of it much of a big deal
that Microsoft brought out their own BASIC in 1975 (or whenever),
in fact some people might argue as to where there BASIC came
from, so maybe there was a connection with the BASIC written
in 1964 to the one in 1975?!

CP/M is more significant for me because as some will say was
partly responcable for DOS & CP/M has plenty of BASICs for it.
But Turbo Pascal just seems to have a lot more going for it.
Naturally, I talking from having a little experience with a BASIC
myself, I wouldn't expect anyone to perhaps play with Turbo
Pascal from stratch (although it might be possible).
In my view BASIC really got bogged down, there are also too
many variations of the language (for example Pascal has had
a form of standardizing which doesn't include Turbo Pascal
naturally), but BASIC hasn't! :-(

BASIC went on for longer, because more people were learning
this, unfortunately the problems began when people didn't want
to learn anything else but BASIC. Unfortunately BASIC has it's
limits, but so does Turbo Pascal, but the interesting thing about
TP is very few exploited those limits in CP/M in general. Which
is why so much CP/M software is the way it is. The other
downside to CP/M is people visioned CP/M as some kinda
business orientated operating system, it's really capable of
doing more. It could be like DOS & have decent graphical
games, not text adventures! :-(

Regards.
 
I used to write lots of Basic Programs about a dozen of them dealing with rocketry and simulation.My biggest Amatuer Rocket flight simulator that I designed was about 32K in size.I learned the difference between a interpreted language and a compiled one and had the programs run a lot faster.I used to use Fortran 4 on the Punch Card machines earlier.
I will never forget the good old Basic days.
 
"Jon Jarmon" wrote in message:

> I used to write lots of Basic Programs about a dozen
> of them dealing with rocketry and simulation.My
> biggest Amatuer Rocket flight simulator that I
> designed was about 32K in size.I learned the
> difference between a interpreted language and a
> compiled one and had the programs run a lot faster.
> I used to use Fortran 4 on the Punch Card machines
> earlier.

Sorry I wasn't sure which language you were referning
to being faster when it comes to interpreted & compiled
language.

On my Amstrad becuase BASIC is so comperhensive
& interpreted, it trends to be slower that the compiled
languages or Assembly in general.

Becuase IBM compatables are so fast nowadays an
interpreted language maybe the same speed as the
compiled one.

Cheers.
 
Ho CP/M user. Sometimes I would just write a program into Machine Code rather than have to bother with assembly(of course most people understood assembly) but I understood the binary stuff.
I learned at first by using the peek and poke commands in Basic.

Other times I would use a compiler that would compile a program written in the interpreted and much slower basic language into machine language.
It runs several hundred times faster!
 
"Jon Jarmon" wrote in message:

> Ho CP/M user. Sometimes I would just write a
> program into Machine Code rather than have to
> bother with assembly(of course most people
> understood assembly) but I understood the binary stuff.
> I learned at first by using the peek and poke commands
> in Basic.

I did a little bit of Machine Code programming, but
I learned it from Disassemblys (which would have
been programs written in Assembly).

I wrote a little flashy program which displayed the
contents of memory on my Amstrad using BASIC.
It maybe it's time to write it in Turbo Pascal under
CP/M, maybe that will help me with some programming
problems there.

> Other times I would use a compiler that would compile
> a program written in the interpreted and much slower
> basic language into machine language.
> It runs several hundred times faster!

Turbo Pascal's like that. You can write a pascal program
which can just simply be executed in Memory. Once it's
compiled I think it runs faster. But a more classic case
would be Microsoft that wrote a couple of BASICs (one
was just interpreted & the other compiled) called QBASIC.
GWBASIC is another interpreted BASIC as well.

Cheers.
 
B.A.S.I.C.!

B.A.S.I.C.!

Ahhh, BASIC, I am one of those people who enjoy BASIC, I have programmed in other languages, but many of which are mnot as approachable as BASIC.

One thing I have been doing the past few years is collecting BASIC games books, and there are quite a few of em. One thing nice about BASIC is that it is easy to read - no deciphering some strange code like #&(.++) (don't sweat on it I just made it up). So with all those published volumes are procedures and calculations ready to read and experiment with to figure out, improve and translate. One book even has a chess program (Tim Hartnells' Second Big Book of BASIC Games) never thought I'd see one in BASIC, but given time anything can be done in it (yeah, it may be better in some other language, but if it works and does what people need it doesn't really matter, does it? :)

For those looking to re-live BASIC greatness on modern platforms, I suggest Chipmunk BASIC (it's free and available on most platforms) , very microsoft standardish and on the classic Macs (OS9 or less) it supports hi-res graphics too!
 
I have spent days playing with my IBM PS/2 model 30's BASIC. The hard drive in the machine is borken and it just boots into BASIC from ROM... very cool stuff.
 
I mostly used Basic on my Commodores. Learned that one real fast...even with the C= specific codes. Still, it's pretty universal. I dabbled in ML for a while, it was a little too much for me to get a good handle on. I do remember typing in a load of ML from the Compute and Compute's Gazette magazines. They did us Commie's a great favor when they created a program called MLX...the last code of the line held a checksum, cuz that stuff was EASY to mistype. Lines like: A3, B7, 7F, 4$, etc... Binary was actually easier. I learned that for programming sprites. First you code the graphic values, then convert to binary. That was easy.
 
Re: BASIC

Bheise said:
....BAck many years ago when I was in High school (88-91) I can recall times in class when I would go through a whole period or two of doing nothing but writing a BASIC program in my notebook while the teacher rambled on about Algebra, English, etc....
Click to expand...

Good thing ya never let school interfere with yer education...

--T
 
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