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I first cut my teeth on GW-BASIC on my Tandy 1000, and I wrote some pretty crazy stuff on that. The author is totally right... demystifying what was going on w

I first cut my teeth on GW-BASIC on my Tandy 1000, and I wrote some pretty crazy stuff on that. The author is totally right... demystifying what was going on was key to getting my feet wet. I soon learned that BASIC was an interpreted language (which is why I couldn't just run it at the command line), and that I needed a "compiler" to make machine code, or learn assembly, so then I wanted a compiler, and I learned C, etc. etc. etc. Twenty something years later, I don't think the experience left me with any scars or bad habits, but I might not be a programmer today if I hadn't started with BASIC.

thwarted 17y ago
I soon learned that BASIC was an interpreted language (which is why I couldn't just run it at the command line) Maybe the BASIC you used couldn't be entered from the command line, but you could type BASIC commands into the Commodore 64 directly, without having to write a program first, and they would be executed. This has nothing to do with it being interpreted or compiled.
- mynameishere 17y ago
  Same with the apple ii. I was looking for an emulator to prove my point and found this pretty nice one: http://www.virtualapple.org/dungeonmasterdisk.html http://www.virtualapple.org/dungeonmasterdisk.html [fun game] run this program, hit ctrl-c and type print "hello world"; http://www.virtualapple.org/overrundisk.html http://www.virtualapple.org/overrundisk.html
  - weaksauce 17y ago
    Ah the first computer I learned how to program on at the ripe age of 3. The apple iie of course. I still miss the days of millionare, karakteka, conan, and autoduel(we had this computer for years and years)
- mosburger 17y ago
  The Tandy 1000 was an MS-DOS clone. GWBASIC.EXE was a separate program that you ran at the DOS prompt, then you could start writing your program. You could probably also do something like GWBASIC <your program name>. But when I was a kid, that never felt like a "real" program. The real .EXE and .COM programs were compiled and ran straight from the DOS prompt, and I wanted one of those. You're right, I had friends with C-64s and Apples. For the C-64, BASIC was basically the whole "interface." Running a program involved running a BASIC LOAD command. Not so on the early DOS clones.
parenthesis 17y ago
Incidentally, the original implementation of BASIC at Dartmouth was a compiler.

thwarted 17y ago

I soon learned that BASIC was an interpreted language (which is why I couldn't just run it at the command line) Maybe the BASIC you used couldn't be entered from the command line, but you could type BASIC commands into the Commodore 64 directly, without having to write a program first, and they would be executed. This has nothing to do with it being interpreted or compiled.

mynameishere 17y ago
Same with the apple ii. I was looking for an emulator to prove my point and found this pretty nice one: http://www.virtualapple.org/dungeonmasterdisk.html http://www.virtualapple.org/dungeonmasterdisk.html [fun game] run this program, hit ctrl-c and type print "hello world"; http://www.virtualapple.org/overrundisk.html http://www.virtualapple.org/overrundisk.html
- weaksauce 17y ago
  Ah the first computer I learned how to program on at the ripe age of 3. The apple iie of course. I still miss the days of millionare, karakteka, conan, and autoduel(we had this computer for years and years)
mosburger 17y ago
The Tandy 1000 was an MS-DOS clone. GWBASIC.EXE was a separate program that you ran at the DOS prompt, then you could start writing your program. You could probably also do something like GWBASIC <your program name>. But when I was a kid, that never felt like a "real" program. The real .EXE and .COM programs were compiled and ran straight from the DOS prompt, and I wanted one of those. You're right, I had friends with C-64s and Apples. For the C-64, BASIC was basically the whole "interface." Running a program involved running a BASIC LOAD command. Not so on the early DOS clones.

parenthesis 17y ago

Incidentally, the original implementation of BASIC at Dartmouth was a compiler.