BASIC turns 60 • Hacker News Board

Re: BASIC turns 60

#21

Post by dotnet00 » Wed, May 01, 2024, 4:52 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #4

It's hard to overstate how important BASIC was to the adoption of personal computing - it provided a straightforward way to program an entire generation of home computers and bootstrapped countless careers.

Yep, BASIC bootstrapped my programming interest even as late as the late 2000s. School library was ancient, the only programming books were on BASIC and internet access was limited. So I got started trying to use those to learn this: https://justbasic.com/ (surprisingly, updated even up till 2018, and the paid version updated just a few months ago).

As a clueless, overly ambitious 12 year old I was a massive annoyance for the skilled users on their forums, I remember getting ranted at for wasting people's time with stupid questions, writing awful code, not understanding licenses etc, but it was a pretty good entry point until I managed to get my hands on books for more modern languages.

Re: BASIC turns 60

#22

Post by personalityson » Wed, May 01, 2024, 4:53 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #5

pjmlp wrote: post #3

Happy birthday BASIC! A short reminder that the original Dartmouth BASIC was actually JIT compiled, including while using the REPL. And most big iron OSes like VAX/VMS had proper compilers. It was due to the 8 bit home microcomputers that it got the fame of being interpreted, as naturally there is only so much that fits into 16 - 64 KB.

As a language, it's very low-level. It has nicer syntax than assembly had, and is relatively portable, but the concepts are all really close to the metal.

VBA in Excel is only 4 times slower than C, I think (if you do typed code).

Re: BASIC turns 60

#23

Post by 7thaccount » Wed, May 01, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #17

duxup wrote: post #2

I distinctly remember being taught BASIC in school in the 1980s and quickly thinking “this is awfully basic” and not wanting much to do with it. Now I don’t know if my childhood evaluation was correct but I do wonder: Were there many complex programs written in BASIC? Or was it largely a teaching tool?

VBA was used for tons of enterprise applications in the late '90s and early oughts. The implementation in things like Excel was surprisingly powerful and they had to sort of dial it back because they realized it was a huge security risk. (You could open up a spreadsheet that was a powerful virus.) In the '90s when we were developing a 3D game (in C++) I made an early iteration of the level designer in VBA on Excel. Y…

People still use VBA all the time. I think of it differently than the basic language of the 80s or even the more powerful commercial compilers used by some today like PowerBasic. VBA is just so highly tied to Excel. There is a new way to also script Excel with some kind of typescript. It's built into the latest version of Excel and seems to be more straightforward.

Re: BASIC turns 60

#24

Post by TillE » Wed, May 01, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #2

I distinctly remember being taught BASIC in school in the 1980s and quickly thinking “this is awfully basic” and not wanting much to do with it. Now I don’t know if my childhood evaluation was correct but I do wonder: Were there many complex programs written in BASIC? Or was it largely a teaching tool?

Except for some graphics code, Ultima I was written in Applesoft BASIC.

Akalabeth was entirely BASIC, but that's somewhat less impressive.

Re: BASIC turns 60

#25

Post by MarkusWandel » Wed, May 01, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #2

I distinctly remember being taught BASIC in school in the 1980s and quickly thinking “this is awfully basic” and not wanting much to do with it. Now I don’t know if my childhood evaluation was correct but I do wonder: Were there many complex programs written in BASIC? Or was it largely a teaching tool?

Based on my limited exposure to "professional" software in the BASIC era... some pretty good stuff was a hybrid of BASIC and assembly language, leveraging the best of both (BASIC was pretty good at laying out screens, input fields etc, at least on the Commodore PET, whereas hand-coded assembly language had the code density and speed).

Was it a "toy" language? Sure. I once implemented a non-scrolling toy spreadsheet program with it - just a fixed grid of cells - with some simple formula capacity and a manual "recalculate" trigger. Was that educational? You bet. Was it sophisticated? Not really.

But I'll bet there were absolute tons of one-off business applications written in it. A simpler version of what Excel was used for later, and still is. And scientific calculations? If Fortran could do it, BASIC could. Until something better came along to replace both.

Re: BASIC turns 60

#26

Post by MarkusWandel » Wed, May 01, 2024, 4:57 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #2

I distinctly remember being taught BASIC in school in the 1980s and quickly thinking “this is awfully basic” and not wanting much to do with it. Now I don’t know if my childhood evaluation was correct but I do wonder: Were there many complex programs written in BASIC? Or was it largely a teaching tool?

Also "awfully basic" compared to what? For me it was the first exposure to programming, period, and totally got me excited. Heck, back then even programmable calculators were exciting. There was just this hunger to program something, anything.

Re: BASIC turns 60

#27

Post by jcadam » Wed, May 01, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

My introduction to programming was with Integer BASIC on the Apple II. I was about 7 years old at the time and was hooked instantly. From there, I moved on to Amiga AMOS (also a basic), Pascal, C, and so on...

Given the state of the field these days though, I can't help but wonder if I should have gone into some other line of work instead.

Re: BASIC turns 60

#28

Post by 392 » Wed, May 01, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

dotnet00 wrote: post #21

rbanffy wrote: post #4

It's hard to overstate how important BASIC was to the adoption of personal computing - it provided a straightforward way to program an entire generation of home computers and bootstrapped countless careers.

Yep, BASIC bootstrapped my programming interest even as late as the late 2000s. School library was ancient, the only programming books were on BASIC and internet access was limited. So I got started trying to use those to learn this: https://justbasic.com/ (surprisingly, updated even up till 2018, and the paid version updated just a few months ago). As a clueless, overly ambitious 12 year old I was a massive annoyanc…

Exact same story for me with JustBASIC, late 2000s, no home Internet connection except dialup. Excellent built in help.

Re: BASIC turns 60

#29

Post by rbanffy » Wed, May 01, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #18

rbanffy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my Apple II's (with AppleSoft BASIC) I missed proper functions and the ability to use a stack. Recursion was next to impossible to express.

Yeah, but that was a 8 bit system, not what made BASIC in first place.

8-bit computers were pretty important for the widespread adoption of BASIC. For most of them, BASIC was the OS shell.

Re: BASIC turns 60

#30

Post by reaperducer » Wed, May 01, 2024, 5:01 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #2

I distinctly remember being taught BASIC in school in the 1980s and quickly thinking “this is awfully basic” and not wanting much to do with it. Now I don’t know if my childhood evaluation was correct but I do wonder: Were there many complex programs written in BASIC? Or was it largely a teaching tool?

Were there many complex programs written in BASIC? Or was it largely a teaching tool?

People who weren't old enough to be in business remember BASIC as something from their home computers, but BASIC was integral to many businesses in the early years of general purpose computing.

There were plenty of business programs written in BASIC, and part of its appeal was that any business owner with a little time could learn how to customize those programs to suit their particular business' needs.

BASIC wasn't just for homes and home computers. Virtually every computer or computing device produced in that era had BASIC available for it, and for good reason. It was quick to learn, versatile, and when you knew the basics on one system, you could use that knowledge on other systems.

BASIC was available on machines ranging from $250 to $200,000 or more. There wouldn't be BASIC on $50,000 machines if there wasn't a demand for it.

My memory is a bit fuzzy on this specific, but I'm pretty sure that HP had a computer that came with both BASIC and AP/L. Nobody was using that machine in their homes.