[Coco] Happy Birthday BASIC!

[James Jones]

No, it's not just you. Here's the standard quote from Edsger W. Dijkstra: "It
is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have
had a prior exposure to BASIC <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/BASIC>: as
potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
regeneration." Dijkstra would have written me off; I got my start (not
counting curiosities like the Bell Labs CARDIAC cardboard sort-of computer
we were all given in junior high) in 1971 with a few weeks' exposure to
BASIC on a Data General Supernova thanks to the University of Oklahoma (and
in particular Dr. Richard V. Andree) and an NSF-sponsored setup with weekly
lectures and lab time. BTW, Supernova BASIC had the original Dartmouth
BASIC "MAT" statements and functions for matrix operations.

Kemeny and Kurtz themselves didn't like microcomputer BASICs of the sort
that Microsoft, or rather Micro-Soft, churned out in the early days; they
referred to them as "gutter BASIC".

The thing is that the early BASICs are not suited for anything but tiny
programs, thanks to primitive control structures, no data structures other
than arrays, no data types other than floating point numbers and strings,
one global namespace for all variables, and subroutines as the closest
thing to a way to break tasks down into smaller pieces. BASICs like Color
BASIC are not a help but an impediment to writing any nontrivial program.

On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 3:54 PM, Glen Hewlett <glen.hewlett at sympatico.ca>
wrote:

> I don’t know if it’s just me but I had always felt that BASIC was looked
> down upon by most serious programmers in the 80’s and 90’s.  I always
> thought it was an awesome language and easy to write programs with.  Super
> quick development/test/debug times and easy to learn.
>
> Maybe because of the name Beginner’s All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
> had the name Beginner in it made it so that it was looked down at, I don’t
> know.  Sure there are more powerful languages but for general purpose
> programming on an old computer I think BASIC is awesome.
>
> I’m still fighting with my Pacman transcode in 100% assembly, but I have
> written some programs in BASIC on the CoCo to help me convert the ROM
> graphics from the original hardware into something the CoCo 3 can use and
> it was a joy.  I also wrote some BASIC code to convert graphic sprites into
> compiled sprites and enjoyed the experience on the CoCo.
>
> FYI - There is a compiler for QB for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android
> called QB64 that takes your BASIC program and compiles it into a super fast
> machine language program native to your computer.  I only mention it since
> Quick Basic is VERY similar to CoCo Basic and someone here might get a kick
> out of using it.  It can be found here: http://www.qb64.net/
>
> Cheers,
> Glen
>
> > On May 2, 2017, at 4:11 PM, Wayne Campbell <asa.rand at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > It is there, albeit as a brief allusion to the fact:
> >
> > History -> Origin
> > 2nd paragraph
> > 3rd sentence reads:
> >
> > "Wanting use of the language to become widespread, its designers made the
> > compiler available free of charge."
> >
> > Wayne
> >
> > On May 2, 2017 11:44 AM, "Salvador Garcia via Coco" <
> coco at maltedmedia.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Something that I did not locate in that Wiki entry is that the original
> >> BASIC was a compiled language.
> >>
> >> Seeing how many shunned BASIC because it was interpreted, I believe that
> >> this is an important item.
> >>
> >> And if anyone feels nostalgic, you can still program like it is 1964
> here:
> >>
> >> http://www.vintageisthenewold.com/program-in-basic-like-it-is-1964/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Salvador
> >>
> >>
> >>      From: Frank Pittel <fpittel at gmail.com>
> >> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> >> Sent: Tuesday, May 2, 2017 11:10 AM
> >> Subject: [Coco] Happy Birthday BASIC!
> >>
> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC
> >>
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> >>
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