[Coco] scary old code

[Rob Rosenbrock]

I actually have fond memories of the book that came with the Model I. Well written, and fun to follow. As a kid, I quickly learned BASIC. 'Ready' and 'OK' still seem an inviting prompt.

After learning the "right" way to program, I found it hard to start coding. Sort of like that old canard about whether you start walking with your left or right foot, and you end up tripping over your feet.

I have asked many times how someone would begin today. There are no BASIC interpreters these days, just the visual environments where the initial focus is on the structure and appearance of windows and dialog boxes. Code becomes scattered across so many modules that a program doesn't resemble a program. Regardless of the language, the concepts just don't seem apparent.

The original authors of BASIC, Kemeny and Kurtz, released something called TrueBASIC, and I guess that's still available. It is still very much an interpreter, but the language has been improved and does not rely on line numbers. It was targeted for education, but I can't see it being used in anything other than an introductory role these days.


On Jul 22, 2010, at 12:37 AM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:

> I think most of us who were introduced to the world of programming via
> the CoCo probably have some very bad code on a disk or tape somewhere.
> The CoCo makes it so easy to start programming that you can get ahead
> of yourself, writing code that is beyond your own skill level by trial
> and error.   I don't think that's a bad thing... doing something the
> wrong way helps you appreciate the right way once you figure it out.
> 
> I don't have kids, but if I did, I would want them to have the same
> experience.  Sure, you might pick up a couple bad habits by learning
> on your own, but those are easily corrected.  The insight you gain
> from learning on a machine like the CoCo is priceless.  On a modern
> computer, I don't know how a kid would even start to learn
> programming.  With the CoCo, it's instantly ready for you to
> experiment.   The BASIC manuals were a big part of it too, they really
> encouraged you to try things and explained each step without becoming
> a boring computer book.  I wonder if there is anything done that well
> for kids (or even adults) today.
> 
> Anyway, don't feel bad or ashamed of old code that's poorly done,
> after all, simply knowing that it's bad indicates you've learned new
> things and grown as a programmer.   If you look at code from years
> prior and cannot see problems with it, you've stopped learning.  (or
> you are one heck of a programmer :)
> 
> -Aaron