
The Golden Age of Basic - spectruman
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/the-golden-age-of-basic#.U2Jd2jtc4tM.hackernews
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drivers99
"... general purpose home computers were replaced in the late 1980s by game
consoles for those interested only in entertainment, or by PCs and Macs for
those looking for more serious applications. None of these replacements were
easily programmable. And while cheap and easy ways to code would eventually
become generally available again for children and teens, learning how to
program would never regain the place in popular culture it held in the 1980s.
The Golden Age of Basic was over."

I'm not sure about Macs, but PC-DOS/MS-DOS came with BASIC/BASICA[1] or
GWBASIC[2] (or QBASIC[3] in the 90s with MS-DOS 5.0). I wrote a bunch of
little fun programs when I was 12-13 in the BASIC that came with DOS.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_BASICA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_BASICA)
[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-
BASIC) [3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic)

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brudgers
In the late 1980's the Commodore 64 in the home was probably not being
replaced by a Mac, but because of price by some version of the Apple II. This
was the GOTO product for home and education into the early 1990's.

In the late 1980's Apple was selling Mac SE's at close to $3000 list price and
Mac II's at $5500 list. These were targeted at business customers with prices
comparable to the bottom end 8088 IBM PS/2 and top 80286 PS/2 respectively.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Apple_II_Family](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Apple_II_Family)

[https://archive.org/stream/byte-
magazine-1987-06/1987_06_BYT...](https://archive.org/stream/byte-
magazine-1987-06/1987_06_BYTE_12-06_CAD_Mice_12-MHz_ATs_IBM_PS2_Family#page/n133/mode/2up)

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flomo
Not to disagree, but Apple had very steep educational discounts. My example:
Mac SE with harddisk, ImageWriter II, Microsoft Word, and some other software
for $2500. Macs were everywhere in higher education (except the business
school).

My impression is most of the home computing scene largely moved over to Amigas
and Atari STs.

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richardjdare
The Amiga had several good BASICs, particularly AMOS and Blitz Basic. Blitz
was very powerful and fun to program. You could easily drop beneath the
provided commands and access the OS and hardware beneath. It had well-
integrated inline assembly. I ended up using it as an assembler with the BASIC
facilities for support.

The first game in Team 17's long running Worms franchise was written in Blitz.

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starterblock
I used to walk up to the computer kiosks in RadioShack mall storefronts, write
a quick loop saying "Joe was here", hit Return and run away. It was glorious.

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mlitchard
I used to make program loops that were appropriately obscene for a 12 yr old,
snigger at the clerk trying to cope with what I did (I was _12_ ), then run
off.

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comatose_kid
Woohoo - that was me, except it was the Atari 600xl that a really nice uncle
shipped to me :). Far too much time spent pounding out basic programs on that
crap keyboard and learning about the intricacies of the hardware (GTIA chip!)

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LeoPanthera
Syntax Era

