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Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

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Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#81

Post by themadturk »

dole wrote: post #64
defrost wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could LOAD a massive array of numbers and POKE them into memory ... Such things were printed in magazines as BASIC listings and they were, in fact, "programmed in assembler" and typed in by hand.

Nothing like typing in a 2 page program full of DATA statements and number values only to find out you made a mistake SOMEWHERE and they didn’t have any checksum routines. I don’t know how many times I typed in that damn MAD magazine program and never got it to work. It took 30+ years to find out it had a error, would never run anyway and seeing someone else fix the bug and watching the program execute after all thos…

Compute! Magazine for the Commodore 64 had a special input program that did checksums on their input listings, allowing you to type in long lists of numbers accurately and eventually end up with the excellent SpeedScript word processor, among other programs.

Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#82

Post by benj111 »

muyuu wrote: post #6
jmmv wrote: post #2

Agree with the author’s thesis of how the folks that “grew with computers” have an advantage over those approaching them now, in terms of understanding the inner workings. I’m not sure that this matters much in terms of solving actual problems though, which is probably a good thing. But I somehow find it a little bit sad that this is the case, so I’ll plug my own https://www.endbasic.dev/ because it’s very fitting in…

let's not overly romanticise it though the vast majority of people with access to computers in the 80s didn't harness the opportunity to be able to understand a lot of what was happening that was always going to be the case, and similarly people nowadays more often than not don't harness the vast opportunities that they have at their fingertips

Isn't it more a case of X% will become programmers if given the opportunity. Computers of old maximised that opportunity thus increasing the absolute number of programmers.

Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#83

Post by retrocryptid »

Minor nit: computerland didn't sell C64's. They sold "business computers." In 1983, that meant they were trying to sell Apple ///'s, IBM PCs, Apple Lisa's and maybe a leftover CP/M machine.

You had to go to your local toy or department store to get a C64's or 1541. I remember the day the C64 price hit $200 at BEST (discount toy-heavy catalog store.) But the 1541 was still something like $400, so... OOF!

Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#84

Post by gallier2 »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #19
jmmv wrote: post #2

Agree with the author’s thesis of how the folks that “grew with computers” have an advantage over those approaching them now, in terms of understanding the inner workings. I’m not sure that this matters much in terms of solving actual problems though, which is probably a good thing. But I somehow find it a little bit sad that this is the case, so I’ll plug my own https://www.endbasic.dev/ because it’s very fitting in…

We still have that 80s experience. Lest you forget, the TI83/84 is the only Collegeboard approved graphing calculator for the SAT and is thus the public school standard through to today. Well into the 2000s and probably still now bored teens have TI BASIC with them.

The calculators they have today in high-school here (France) use Python as programming interface (TI-83 Premium)

Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#85

Post by Starwatcher2001 »

hfo wrote: post #24

Mine was the Atari 800XL. Atari Basic hadn't PEEK and POKE as the C64 (though something similar which I can't remember right now), but some more possibilities to switch graphic modes and plot things. But I never learned how the machine worked from that, it was still magic. I tried typing in listings, but you only knew that there was a typo somewhere after you finished hundreds of lines. Finding the typo was out of th…

"That still mystifies me: The 6502-equivalent of an if-clause was branch-not-equal (BNE), but how did that work in reality? What's happening on the silicone then? How can a lifeless thing make a decision? Never really understood whats beneath the turtles."

My itch didn't stop after learning BASIC or machine code, I wanted to know what has deeper down. After reading the Zacs Z80 book, this was my next port of call and is still a damn good teaching aid on how microprocessors actually work, all the way from transistors, flip-flops, boolean logic, memory, address & data buses, timing, logical shifting, adding, multiplying etc.

It's still on my bookshelf and will probably get passed to my granddaugher if she shows any interest.

https://archive.org/details/understanding-microprocessors-ra...

Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#86

Post by muyuu »

benj111 wrote: post #82
muyuu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let's not overly romanticise it though the vast majority of people with access to computers in the 80s didn't harness the opportunity to be able to understand a lot of what was happening that was always going to be the case, and similarly people nowadays more often than not don't harness the vast opportunities that they have at their fingertips

Isn't it more a case of X% will become programmers if given the opportunity. Computers of old maximised that opportunity thus increasing the absolute number of programmers.

there is truth to that, but mainly in a social sense - the best that was out there in practical and economic terms for most people, also was a very good learning platform

but in terms of just existing, nowadays there is better; you can even just go back and use those old machines in more accessible ways than back then, and for free, too... whereas back then it was a middle class kid thing

Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#87

Post by ilaksh »

timsneath wrote: post #5

This is a lovely ode to the period in which I developed my love for computers. Although like many growing up east of the Atlantic Ocean, my computer of choice was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Without the budget to afford to buy much in the way of cassette-based professional software, like most I resorted to manually entering programs from magazines like Sinclair User[1] and Personal Computer World[2], which got me into…

Hmm.. I wonder if it would be possible to train Alpaca or Llama or something on all of the available ZX Spectrum BASIC code.. if possible along with descriptions and manuals where available.

I guess you would run into output window issues. But in X months or a few years that could be solved.

You might be able to ask a really advanced model to just write a fully custom ZX Spectrum game. Just remember to start with "think step-by-step" or something like that.

Actually this is probably something you could try right away with GPT-4. Even 8k could be interesting. But especially the 32k model.

If you couldn't find something like Spectrum BASIC that it was accurate enough on, you could define a BASIC at the beginning and give it a few key memory locations or something.

Although there are probably already enough ZX Spectrum programs in a way.

Here is my demo I made of my vintage simulator thing running hundreds of ZX Spectrum instances at a time on a PC: https://youtu.be/BjeVzEQW4C8

Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#88

Post by lproven »

teddyh wrote: post #76

The article delves only very shallowly into programming, so it stays away from this problem, but Commodore 64 BASIC is fundamentally unsuitable for programming anything larger than a few lines of code. The most widely used version of Basic which Commodore (and other) platforms used does not have functions . This makes Basic programs tend to spaghetti and unreadable code, especially considering the constant memory con…

> The most widely used version of Basic which Commodore (and other) platforms used does not have functions.

Jeez. That's an American problem, that.

Even ZX Spectrum BASIC had named functions.

BBC BASIC didn't just have functions, it had full named procedures, with multiple parameters and local variables, so programs could use recursion.

I knew Commodore BASIC was bad, and have written about it:

https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/71381.html

Which in turn was picked up in other places, e.g.

https://hackaday.com/2020/05/28/jack-tramiel-got-a-good-deal...

But I didn't realise it was that bad. Even the budget European 8-bits of 1981 or 1982 were better than that!

Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#89

Post by teddyh »

lproven wrote: post #88
teddyh wrote: post #76

The article delves only very shallowly into programming, so it stays away from this problem, but Commodore 64 BASIC is fundamentally unsuitable for programming anything larger than a few lines of code. The most widely used version of Basic which Commodore (and other) platforms used does not have functions . This makes Basic programs tend to spaghetti and unreadable code, especially considering the constant memory con…

> The most widely used version of Basic which Commodore (and other) platforms used does not have functions. Jeez. That's an American problem, that. Even ZX Spectrum BASIC had named functions. BBC BASIC didn't just have functions, it had full named procedures, with multiple parameters and local variables, so programs could use recursion. I knew Commodore BASIC was bad, and have written about it: https://liam-on-linux.…

That’s a UK-centric perspective. The rest of Europe did not, by and large, use Spectrums or BBC Micros; they all mostly used Commodore 64s. (I am not an American.)

AFAIK, Americans mostly used Apple ][, not Commodore, which also had the Microsoft BASIC without named functions, IIUC.

Re: Learning BASIC Like It's 1983 (2018)

#90

Post by lproven »

teddyh wrote: post #89
lproven wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most widely used version of Basic which Commodore (and other) platforms used does not have functions. Jeez. That's an American problem, that. Even ZX Spectrum BASIC had named functions. BBC BASIC didn't just have functions, it had full named procedures, with multiple parameters and local variables, so programs could use recursion. I knew Commodore BASIC was bad, and have written about it: https://liam-on-linux.…

That’s a UK-centric perspective. The rest of Europe did not, by and large, use Spectrums or BBC Micros; they all mostly used Commodore 64s. (I am not an American.) AFAIK, Americans mostly used Apple ][, not Commodore, which also had the Microsoft BASIC without named functions, IIUC.

> The rest of Europe [...] mostly used Commodore 64s.

I don't think that's true.

I was a teenager in the 1980s; I had one (1) friend with a C64. The only other person at university with their own computer was, like mine, a ZX Spectrum.

The Spectrum 128 was designed in Spain by Investronica in Spain, and first sold in Spain:

https://medium.com/@uto_dev/the-awakening-of-the-spectrum-12...

In Portugal, they also had their own version of the Spectrum, derived from the American Timex-Sinclair 2068:

https://timex.comboios.info/tc2068.html

Poland had a version too, the Unipolbrit:

http://oldcomputer.info/8bit/unipolbrit/index.htm

Of course in Comminist times, there were many Spectrum clones in East Europe; this article lists about 60 or 70 different makes (not models, but brands, many with multiple models):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones

In France there were lots of unique machines, the Thomson, Hector, Victor and others:

https://hackaday.com/tag/french-computers/

https://www.abandonware-france.org/ltf_abandon/ltf_infos_fic...

Tangerine's Oric, Atmos and Stratos line were also big, especially in France I believe:

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/526/Oric-1-48k/

https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=79

https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=226

There was even a Welsh machine, the Dragon series, as well as Camputers Lynx, Memotech, Tatung Einstein, Elan Enterprise, and many more.

In the 1980s there was a huge and bewildering variety of home computers in Europe, many but by no means all British.

And pretty much not a single one ran MS BASIC, because it wasn't very good. They all had their own.

I haven't even touched on the Japanese market which was just as diverse.

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