111–120 of 133 posts
I got my first computer in 1995, but it wasn't until 1998 that a classmate told me about QBasic. I remember my first "program" was a text-based RPG, except I didn't know about variables so it was basically just a digital choose-your-own adventure book where I enumerated all possible outcomes. I must have written a few thousand lines before looking at some of the pre-written programs and the help manual and learned ho…
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I am guessing that is straight-up LOGO on Python.
It is turtle library inspired by Logo alright, but important thing is that it was available from very early versions of python onwards, and by default available when python is installed.
This video from Mathologer about solving polynomial equations might be just as easy to implement in Python with that library as it would be under NetLogo (a more multi-dimensional science-oriented implementation of Logo), which certainly justifies having a turtle library to begin with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUC-8P0zXe8
I'd hate to program that under BASIC.
BASIC is a good place to start, but so is Logo, and there are plenty of modern Logo interpreters such as https://turtlespaces.org
Second this. I myself started with logo when I was 7 years old. Gratification was way more "immediate" than BASIC. After a bit, I moved into Basic, where I spent days and days doing small games, until a family friend introduced me to C and I found Allegro. I miss those days...
I like BASIC and recently been thinking it might be nice to do some modern game dev on BASIC. My father got me into programming on a TI-99/4A [0] machine, so the BASIC language always has a place in my heart. However, I recently also came across a nice game development course from Harvard, CS-50 [1] (an excellent course, much recommended!). And for CS-50 the Lua language is used in combination with the LÖVE [2] frame…
Tell me you had Extended Basic, the Editor / Assembler, the speech synthesizer, and the expansion box for the TI. :) I didn't have E / A or the expansion box, but I did have Extended Basic and the speech synthesizer, and just those were a lot of fun. Using a cassette tape as a storage device was kind of clunky, but it worked; I would have much rather had a floppy drive or 2. OTOH, I don't miss the primitive editing m…
Both do not offer a nice IDE out of the box though.
But there’s definitely magic to Basic, from a sheet of paper with line numbered, easy to understand (closest to language), instructions you can copy into a simple ide, to immediate results. There’s no entry barrier.
Such a nice story to read, thanks op.
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Tell me you had Extended Basic, the Editor / Assembler, the speech synthesizer, and the expansion box for the TI. :) I didn't have E / A or the expansion box, but I did have Extended Basic and the speech synthesizer, and just those were a lot of fun. Using a cassette tape as a storage device was kind of clunky, but it worked; I would have much rather had a floppy drive or 2. OTOH, I don't miss the primitive editing m…
Two cartridges were compulsory : Extended Basic and Tunnels of Doom. I also had the E/A and expansion box with floppies - which came in handy for loading subs on the fly in Extended Basic, as well as being a better setup than tape for ToD. It was a little awkward with the only "namespace" being line numbers, but it worked.
It's amazing how many people love ToD. There's even a Youtube video of a guy playing the theme music on a music box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euMH2fCERAc
I'm currently working on trying to get it to run in MAME. I have a TI-99/4A successfully booting to BASIC, but I haven't got ToD itself to boot yet.