
Fifty Years of Basic, the Language That Made Computers Personal (2014) - susam
http://time.com/69316/basic/
======
mratzloff
There's never been anything quite like Basic in the 1980s. It was everywhere
and built in. For most users, it _was_ programming.

I wrote my first program on our family's Atari 800 computer. It was a budget
machine with a mediocre, slow Basic, but it worked. Millennials are often
surprised to learn that there were many Basic magazines with entire game
programs printed in them. As a kid I would beg my mom to buy these magazines
for me (much cheaper than buying real games), then meticulously type in the
program. Inevitably, it would error out because of some typo, at which point I
would have to pore over the code and find the problem. Learning how to debug
at 9 or 10 years old! When I finally got the program running, I'd play it for
maybe 5-10 minutes—the games themselves weren't usually very good or
complex—then set about figuring out how I could cheat by changing the source
code.

When my family later bought a 386, I mostly played store-bought games on it
and left Basic behind. But my high school was progressive and during my
freshman year I took a yearlong Basic class, using QBasic. Suddenly the 386 I
had in my room (after the family upgraded to a 486) became a Basic machine
again!

Basic set me down the path of a lifelong love of programming. First with
Basic, then C++, and so on. The only thing I asked for for my 10th birthday
was Borland C++. I was a weird kid.

These days macOS comes with Ruby and Python interpreters built in, and
learning resources are better than ever. But it's just not the same. The world
has changed, and there are more idle distractions than anyone could experience
in a lifetime. Programming is hard and the payoff is delayed and not
guaranteed. How can it compete with YouTube or modern video games?

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Basic is a really interesting language for education. Nowadays, apart from
Scratch that is a visual environment, mainly two languages are used for
education: Python and JavaScript (for the Hour of Code etc.). But when you
start, when the kid is 6-years old, Python's indentation doesn't help, and JS
is not ideal either. With BASIC, you just start coding.

A while ago I participated in a workshop by [http://www.my-
hexagon.com](http://www.my-hexagon.com) ; a Duinomite from Olimex was used
there. It was a refreshing experience to see how immediate the response is
from the sensors and how quickly you can control the hardware with a simple
BASIC interpreter actually running on the board - a huge difference from
Arduino when the kid is asking, "Dad, why does it take so long to upload the
sketch?" Heck, even with Mindstorms you have this delay. Duinomite is a joy to
use, the only drawback being its limited VGA output that is not great on
modern high-resolution screens.

------
shakna
What I love most about BASIC, and makes me nostalgic for my old TRS-80, is
visible in the article.

All the games show graphics. Because writing graphics and taking unbuffered
input, is simple and easy in BASIC.

It took me a week, with nothing but an idea and a language manual, to write a
primitive Pacman.

Today, I'm not sure if I could write such an easy graphical program without
diving into some sort of graphics framework, struggle to find the right
language bindings, and get frustrated with the framework not matching patterns
common to the language.

There are few languages today that make it so easy to unleash creativity.

~~~
deckiedan
Lua and the löve ecosystem / thing is quite fun.

[https://love2d.org/](https://love2d.org/)

------
rkagerer
Such nostalgia!

I was 10 years old, and on the bus to summer camp every morning I'd read this
dog-eared book:

[https://imgur.com/a/kmBfx7Y](https://imgur.com/a/kmBfx7Y)

In between singalongs I learned to program. And loved it.

I was such a nerd. The counselors didn't know what to make of me. Dad
complained I should spend more time outside.

Then I grew up, published my first commercial software title and turned that
geeky addiction into a career. Thanks mom and dad for buying me that beat up
old TRS-80! And thanks Mr. Kemeny and Kurtz for bestowing this beautifully
approachable language onto the world, even if your original vision _was_
shamefully bastardized by the time I stumbled upon it.

ps. You can read it, too:
[http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Manuals/H...](http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Manuals/Hardware/Getting%20Started%20With%20Extended%20Color%20Basic%20%28Tandy%29.pdf)

------
open-source-ux
_" We wanted the syntax of the language to consist of common words, and to
have those words have a more-or-less obvious meaning,” says Kurtz._

Whether you love or hate BASIC, two ideas in the language still stand the test
of time: friendly, readable syntax to make the language more amenable to users
(subjective I know) and a small set of commands to reduce the complexity of
programming.

Can those ideas still survive in programming languages today? Some modern
languages possess one of these features, but rarely both.

------
ziotom78
My first experience with the programming was on a Commodore Vic-20. I vividly
remember the users manual, which explained how to use the computer through
simple BASIC programs. I still find amazing that in those times computer
manuals also were _programming_ manuals! When I moved to IBM PCs, I turned to
Turbo Pascal and to a more structured way of programming. But the simplicity
of Commodore Basic still holds a special place in my hearth.

------
UncleSlacky
If anyone wants to recreate a machine that boots straight into BASIC, there's
a minimal version of RISC OS running only BBC BASIC available for the
Raspberry Pi:

[https://www.riscosopen.org/content/sales/risc-os-
pico](https://www.riscosopen.org/content/sales/risc-os-pico)

------
todd8
Fifty years ago I tried to figure out how to write a program. I found a IBM026
keypunch machine in my high school and used it to punch what I hoped would be
my first program: A Fortran implementation of the simplex method for solving
linear programming problems. I turned the deck over to someone to take over to
the school district main building that housed the district's one computer, and
a couple of days later I learned that my program didn't even compile.

Undeterred, I found a book on BASIC in a public library. The language was so
simple and so straightforward that I was able to learn to program by just
reading the the book. I had no access to a system running BASIC, but that book
enabled me to go back to Fortran and write my first successful program (this
time a less ambitious one) that simply printed a one page table of trig
function values. Sadly, I've lost that first program's listing. I used to keep
it folded up inside of my _CRC Handbook of Standard Mathematical Tables_ , but
it's no longer there.

Thanks to BASIC, I've had a long, interesting, and successful career.

------
no-such-address
At the dawn of the "home computer" phenomenon, there was a great deal of
optimism computer literacy for the public would include a much richer
understanding programming. It's too bad that didn't work out. It doesn't seem
fair to blame any specific language or environment because they're all still
readily available. It's just that there's so much you need to know, now, to do
significant work. I wonder if there's any way to improve this situation. A lot
of effort was already expended in this direction.

------
neilwilson
Beginners Allpurpose Symbolic Instruction Code

Never been bettered for a beginner. Particularly when embedded on the machine.

~~~
clouddrover
I'd argue that Pascal is better for a beginner, especially because Pascal is
something you can progress with. Modern Object Pascal is nice to work with.

~~~
pjmlp
Old Object Pascal was already nice to work with on Apple Pascal and Turbo
Pascal 6.0 for MS-DOS (first set of features were on 5.5).

------
keyle
I guess today, the closest equivalent programming language would probably be
Processing. Because like in Basic, it's very easy to learn, and you get stuff
happening easily with plenty of examples around and a sane standard lib.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Processing has many interesting features, and it appeals to many non-tech
adults, too. The difference is huge, though: you don't have every computer
sold today equipped with it. You not only need to install it, you also need to
know it exists and it fits your needs.

