The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

Post by wingi » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:10 AM UTC

ArtWomb wrote: post #52

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…

Am actually totally digging JS DOS, the emscripten build of the DOSBox emulator. The performance is phenomenal in the browser, including vsync. Here is an example (CPU intensive) of multiple 64k demos running simultaneously on a single web page ;) https://js-dos.com/6.22/64k/index.html

Post by jablan » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:12 AM UTC

deepspace wrote: post #140

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.

Post by roywashere » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:16 AM UTC

Post by vidarh » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:17 AM UTC

Tehdasi wrote: post #57

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.

Expectations of complexity were much less in those days. Like, a programming language that is limited to 40 character variable names would be considered amateur hour, but back in the day it was prolly considered luxuriant. Also given the memory constraints, it also limited the amount of complexity you could put in your code.

Post by dirtydroog » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:24 AM UTC

codebolt wrote: post #115

linguae wrote: post #56

The funny thing about this announcement is that a week ago I just found my old QBASIC textbook that I learned how to program with back in 1998. QBASIC was my very first programming language; I was a nine year old kid who loved computers and would read anything computer-related that was available, including my mom's textbooks (she was returning to college at the time and took some courses on computing and applications…

My first attempt at coding was with a Java Programming For Dummies book around the Java 1.1 era, using applets. That was a terrible choice for 12 year old non-native english speaking me, and I never got too far. Somehow I ended up trying QBASIC a couple of years later and programming suddenly became a lot easier and fun. I especially loved that you could easily switch to graphics mode and just start drawing pixels an…