51–55 of 55 posts
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…
Why not QuickBASIC or (for modern systems) FreeBASIC[0]? It can be used both like old-school BASIC with line numbers and such, or as a modern style with named functions and subroutines, and FreeBASIC is FOSS. [0] https://www.freebasic.net/
I see no reason to progress toward the non-BASIC implementations until the modern BASIC equivalents have been accomplished as meaningfully as the originals.
Using FreeBASIC would be closer to the way it was universally at the fingertips of every single Apple II, TRS-80, and PET owner. Soon to be followed by Atari and Commodore 64.
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…
Commercial, but not that expensive. There is a demo you can try.
Free introduction book
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…
> I’m pretty disenchanted by the choice of languages. None of them embody the human-first optimism of early BASICs. Nothing yet exists that has the same properties: simplicity and automatic availability. JS wins on availability as it is present on almost every general purpose device via a web browser, but the syntax is not as human friendly as 10 PRINT "Hello" 20 GOTO 10 or better, lets tweak the language a bit and g…
This is a good point. Back in the 80s, learning on a BBC Micro for me was a lucky confluence of geek, machine, and time period.
Maybe the "geek" part is the most important part.
I loved the BBC Micro and am grateful to have had the opportunity then, but to be honest, I'd probably have discovered computers some other way anyway, and my life might not have been that different. It's probably similar for today's kids--- if they're programmer types, then they can use today's tools and get the same thing out of it. Maybe this particular dream is indeed accessible only to the geeks?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you read the article?
Yes. I still think Small Basic is a good solution.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/678792/wh...