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The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

#131

Post by ken »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #71
ken wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one person working 8 hours a day, that's roughly one line of assembly language per minute. If you know assembly language, and you know the algorithms you're implementing, that doesn't seem especially fast.

You find me someone who can code assembly for 8 hours a day continuously for two months and I'll hire them on the spot.

Is that a serious offer? It's been a couple years but I'm sure with a little practice I could get up to speed again, and (like half the country) I do happen to find myself out of a job right now.

Re: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

#132

Post by mrunkel »

ecpottinger wrote: post #103
weej wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - Edsger Dijkstra

Yes, then I had a computer science student who lost three years of work because he never made a backup of the files on his mac computer. Learning nothing but theory can come back to bite you some times.

LOL. I had three graduate students (PHd CompSci candidates) working for me back at UMass. I come around the corner to see them all clustered around one of the PCs. Apparently one of the graduate students had slid a CD-ROM between two of the blanking panels instead of opening the CD-ROM tray. They were trying to figure out where the CD had gone.

After a chuckle, I showed them how to open the case and retrieve the CD.

Re: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

#133

Post by mrunkel »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #130

Perhaps stupid questions but how do they get the commit history to be from 38 years ago at https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC

Probably a script with some version of:

git commit --amend --no-edit --date="Fri Nov 6 20:00:00 2015 -0600"

Re: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

#134

Post by timonoko »

timonoko wrote: post #124

"Contains no build scripts, makefiles, or tools required to generate executable binaries, nor does it contain any pre-built binaries / executables". So what is the point of publishing this? All we learn that "Every Line Must Have Comment" in Microsoft.

    CLC ; Clear Carry

Re: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

#135

Post by mrunkel »

KCUOJJQJ wrote: post #79
bluedino wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well...remember it is 'just' a BASIC interpreter. Woz wrote Apple integer BASIC in the evenings while working at HP in just a few months. Guys were writing crazy stuff at the time. The original version of DOS that Microsoft bought to license to IBM for the PC was written in 6 weeks.

>The original version of DOS that Microsoft bought to license to IBM for the PC was written in 6 weeks. Is this actually true? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Paterson When a book appeared in 2004 claiming that 86-DOS was an unoriginal "rip-off" of CP/M,[6] Paterson sued the authors and publishers for defamation.[7][8] The judge found that Paterson failed to provide any evidence regarding "serious doubts" abou…

Even a "rip-off" takes time to write. I'm not sure what you're questioning.

It wasn't a direct copying of the code, but the API was largely similar to CP/M.

Re: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

#137

Post by mutagen »

cachestash wrote: post #127

My first foray into BASIC was BBC BASIC. I was an 11 year old in the eighties and attending comprehensive secondary school in the UK. We had a school 'computer room' which hosted ten BBC Micros. The mathematics teacher at the time ran an after school computer club and it was alleged that the last 30 minutes were unstructured and some students had managed to get a cassette tape copy of Elite (now Elite Dangerous) load…

Ones of my early long lasting memories from 7th grade computer lab, my first exposure to programming, was helping another student kick off a deeply nested tangle of IF statements to build his own adventure program.

Years later learning about the Z-machine was a revelation.

Re: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

#138

Post by deepspace »

cachestash wrote: post #127

My first foray into BASIC was BBC BASIC. I was an 11 year old in the eighties and attending comprehensive secondary school in the UK. We had a school 'computer room' which hosted ten BBC Micros. The mathematics teacher at the time ran an after school computer club and it was alleged that the last 30 minutes were unstructured and some students had managed to get a cassette tape copy of Elite (now Elite Dangerous) load…

Good to meet another BBC BASIC aficionado. I did scrape enough money together to buy a BBC model B (was an engineering freshman at the time) and I used the Beeb as my primary computer probably longer than I should have. Wrote a word processor in BBC BASIC, which I used for my final thesis and also a complete Monopoly game. Loaded off tape. Fit in 32K memory....

I'm glad that BBC BASIC offered a more structured version of the language, with named subroutines and all, since it allowed me to move fairly painlessly to my next language, Turbo Pascal on a PC, followed by Turbo C.

Re: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

#139

Post by kristopolous »

kranner wrote: post #105
pan69 wrote: post #100

--------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- COPYRIGHT 1975 BY BILL GATES AND PAUL ALLEN --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- ORIGINALLY WRITTEN ON THE PDP-10 FROM FEBRUARY 9 TO APRIL 9 1975 BILL GATES WROTE A LOT OF STUFF. PAUL ALLEN WROTE A LOT OF OTHER STUFF AND FAST CODE. MONTE DAVIDOFF WROTE THE MATH PACKAGE (F4I.MAC). I love comments like these. They also say that the GW refers to Bill Gates, as in Gates…

The meaning of "GW" is controversial according to the Wikipedia entry for GW-BASIC [1]: > There are several theories on what the initials "GW" stand for. Greg Whitten, an early Microsoft employee who developed the standards in the company's BASIC compiler line, says Bill Gates picked the name GW-BASIC. Whitten refers to it as Gee-Whiz BASIC and is unsure if Gates named the program after him. The Microsoft User Manual…

Those are all too clean for 1983 Microsoft. I'm more likely to think it's some cutting inside joke, maybe an IBM insult.

If they said it was say, something like George Wallace Basic, because they segregated it from IBM basic and only put it on the clones as a "separate but equal basic" I wouldn't think twice.

I can even imagine the meeting

"We can't say this is George Wallace basic, no".

"Fine, it's GW basic. Say it means gee wiz or some shit, just make something up"

Re: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

#140

Post by deepspace »

tobinfricke wrote: post #3

Wow, what a blast from the past. I learned to program with BASICA.EXE and GW-BASIC as a kid in the late 80's. I just noticed that microsoft has also released the source to MS-DOS 2.0: https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS I don't think I ever imagined that I'd be able to "look behind the curtain" like this, let alone that Microsoft would come to embrace open source. From there I moved on to Turbo Pascal 3.0, and then B…

Thirty years later, I still miss the Turbo Pascal / Borland Pascal, Borland C(++) experience. Few, if any, 'modern' IDEs have yet reached the simplicity and ease of that development environment.
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