Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era • Hacker News Board

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#21

Post by kingcharles » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 5:05 AM UTC

musicale wrote: post #18

It would be nice to do a few things with these classic and influential games (isn't the original BASIC version of The Oregon Trail in there?): - Update them with the minimal changes required to run on a modern-ish Microsoft(style) BASIC. - Rewrite them in a modern beginner-friendly(ish) language like Python. (This seems to be what the author wants to do.) - Create (hopefully) easy-to-understand JavaScript versions th…

1. Port them all to Unreal Engine 5 [0]

2. Something something Hacker News

3. Profit?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#22

Post by donatj » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:14 AM UTC

As someone who spent a decent chunk of his youth typing BASIC commands from Books like these into a Mattel Aquarius, I’m pretty disenchanted by the choice of languages.

None of them embody the human-first optimism of early BASICs. BASIC was designed for normal humans to actually get work done, the same vision HyperCard would bring later. It’s reflected and it’s very English syntax. It was, in no uncertain terms, the actual User Interface to many if not most consumer level machines of the age.

I don’t have a strong proposition for a specific language. QB64 is maybe the closest syntactically, but nothing lives up to the spirit of the originals that I am aware of. I was kind of hopeful I was going to get to the end of this and it was going to be a call for developers to work on a new, modern, humane programming language.

People try to tell me that dream is dead. God I hope not, computers in the hands of most users are 99% untapped potential. It’s as if Prometheus give us fire, and we only ever used it to light cigarettes. Every time a user does a repetitive task that should have been a loop they created themself, that waste of life is a small death, and the blood is on our industry.

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#23

Post by WalterBright » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:27 AM UTC

A few years ago, David Ahl was kind enough to sell me copies of the first two years of Creative Computing magazine. Those are a treasure. I love the offbeat informality of them, the cartoons, the old wood engravings.

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#24

Post by nineteen999 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:43 AM UTC

donatj wrote: post #22

As someone who spent a decent chunk of his youth typing BASIC commands from Books like these into a Mattel Aquarius, I’m pretty disenchanted by the choice of languages. None of them embody the human-first optimism of early BASICs. BASIC was designed for normal humans to actually get work done, the same vision HyperCard would bring later. It’s reflected and it’s very English syntax. It was, in no uncertain terms, the…

> Every time a user does a repetitive task that should have been a loop they created themself, that waste of life is a small death, and the blood is on our industry.

The majority of people have no interest in programming, no matter how humane a language were handed to them.

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#25

Post by donatj » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 6:55 AM UTC

nineteen999 wrote: post #24

donatj wrote: post #22

As someone who spent a decent chunk of his youth typing BASIC commands from Books like these into a Mattel Aquarius, I’m pretty disenchanted by the choice of languages. None of them embody the human-first optimism of early BASICs. BASIC was designed for normal humans to actually get work done, the same vision HyperCard would bring later. It’s reflected and it’s very English syntax. It was, in no uncertain terms, the…

> Every time a user does a repetitive task that should have been a loop they created themself, that waste of life is a small death, and the blood is on our industry. The majority of people have no interest in programming, no matter how humane a language were handed to them.

That is absolutely a myth; what we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night. At worst, they don’t know what they want; they asked for a faster horse, and we’re content to keep selling horses and feed.

Watch a normal user use a computer sometime to do work without interjecting. They all do stupid repetitive tasks that take hours and should be easily automated.

Look how far people get with Excel with no programming knowledge. I have seen absolutely incredible spreadsheets that do remarkable things. The will is there, but we’ve kneecap them with awful tools, and then keep repeating but lie that they liked it.

I have a friend with zero background in programming who completely automated his “job” with Autohotkey. His entire work for the day ran in minutes and he just messed around the rest of the day, that underutilization is emblematic of the problem.

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#26

Post by mvkel » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 7:38 AM UTC

This is exactly how I got into computers at age 4. I’d type-in game code on the family Atari 800, taking great satisfaction if/when the games finally ran without throwing errors.

I’ve been looking for a similar resource to introduce my daughters.

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#27

Post by underdeserver » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 8:42 AM UTC

donatj wrote: post #25

nineteen999 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time a user does a repetitive task that should have been a loop they created themself, that waste of life is a small death, and the blood is on our industry. The majority of people have no interest in programming, no matter how humane a language were handed to them.

That is absolutely a myth; what we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night. At worst, they don’t know what they want; they asked for a faster horse, and we’re content to keep selling horses and feed. Watch a normal user use a computer sometime to do work without interjecting. They all do stupid repetitive tasks that take hours and should be easily automated. Look how far people get with Excel with no programming know…

I think we developers don't automate 90% of what we could. What can we expect from laypeople?

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#28

Post by Jare » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 8:49 AM UTC

ijidak wrote: post #14

> bear in mind these are very primitive games from the 1970s. They aren't going to win any awards for gameplay, or programming sophistication This is where I feel sad for today's kids. The pressure to make a great game was lower back then. Programming felt like an amazing accomplishment very quickly. Now, kids feel like they've accomplished very little, even though they're doing more with less code than we did during…

> Now, kids feel like they've accomplished very little

Are you observing kids feeling like this frequently? Where/how are they developing? I think there's a lot of enthusiasm in for example Roblox.

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#29

Post by olliej » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 8:50 AM UTC

I remember getting out all these C64/BASIC programming books from the library when I was a kid. They were filled with cartoon robots and such if I remember correctly.

I remember typing a "lot" (I was somewhere in the 5-7 range at that point) of code from those (and other) books into our C64. I don't recall understanding most/any of what I wrote, but I think it got me sufficiently interested to keep me going until I got to an age that I actually understood what I was doing.

[update: I think I found them, they were by usborne and inexplicably are now free :D : https://usborne.com/us/books/computer-and-coding-books]

Re: Updating the most influential book of the BASIC era

#30

Post by marcodiego » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 8:53 AM UTC

donatj wrote: post #22

As someone who spent a decent chunk of his youth typing BASIC commands from Books like these into a Mattel Aquarius, I’m pretty disenchanted by the choice of languages. None of them embody the human-first optimism of early BASICs. BASIC was designed for normal humans to actually get work done, the same vision HyperCard would bring later. It’s reflected and it’s very English syntax. It was, in no uncertain terms, the…

Actually there's a reason beyond stupidity and conspiracy for things going the way they did. It is very easy to make simple things simple, but by doing that you will likely turn complex things even more complex.

The first example shows a video-poker-like game implemented in 98 lines. You can get close to that with processing or lazarus-ide. Now try to do that so you can play on-line, using the browser, with multiple people at the same time, storing score, records, with login, a network of friends, authentication... You'll end up seeing that node developers and users are neither stupid nor conspiracists.