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I'm only 29 and have memorable experiences playing with my father's C64. I consider myself lucky that he introduced me to C64+BASIC at an early age. I will neve

by nom 10y ago

I'm only 29 and have memorable experiences playing with my father's C64. I consider myself lucky that he introduced me to C64+BASIC at an early age. I will never forget it. I think our family already owned a Gateway 2000 PC (66/90MHz, Win 95) by then, but I actually liked the C64 more. Second favorite was the Atari 1040ST, the PC came last. The C64 is a crucial element that got me into programming/CPUs/Hardware. I went from BASIC to QBasic, then to VisualBasic 3, then 5. After that I got my own PC my father bought me Visual Basic 6, students edition. In retrospective, this has to be the best investment of 120DM (Deutsche Mark) ever made. It fueled my interest even more. I was finally able to write my own 'real' Windows programs. I suddenly had access to everything, from DFU dialups, window managment, Browsers (ActiveX!). It even introduced me to 2D/3D graphics because you can use DirectX/DirectDraw directly. All thanks to the Windows API and Visual Basic. It took a long time until I finally got into Linux and C++, but I never regret that I was introduced to BASIC first, and was taught that GOTO is not evil. PS: If you have kids and want to introduce them to programming, give them access to Blitz BASIC!

verisimilidude 10y ago
The C-64 was my introduction to computing and programming as well. My uncle, a newly minted engineer at the time, brought one to our house when I was about three years old and just left it. This was incredibly fortunate given how poor my family was at the time. Some of the first words I learned how to spell were LOAD and RUN thanks to the BASIC prompt.
- nom 10y ago
  wow it sounds like you've been really lucky! Also: I'm now imagining a 3 year old, yelling 'Mama LOAD "*",8,1'
KineticTroi 10y ago
I often think of the Raspberry PI as the modern equivalent to the c64. Affordable, powerful, educational. It would be great to develop a specialized Raspberry PI BASIC in tribute to Blitz or QBASIC.
- nom 10y ago
  You made me curious and something like that already exists (who would've thought!). RetroPie [1] comes with the VICE [2] emulator. [1] https://retropie.org.uk https://retropie.org.uk [2] http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/ http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/
- SyneRyder 10y ago
  Not quite what you're after, but it might also be worth looking at Xojo, which is a kind of Visual Basic clone that also compiles apps for the Raspberry Pi. (Then if you catch the Xojo bug, it also compiles to iOS and desktop Windows/Mac/Linux.) https://www.xojo.com https://www.xojo.com
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "It would be great to develop a specialized Raspberry PI BASIC in tribute to Blitz or QBASIC." You may find something you like here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-basic/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-bas... Also, the following project is only loosely related to your post, but you might like to know about it too: http://eluabrain.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/brainz-brainz-braaaaaaaaainz.html http://eluabrain.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/brainz-brainz-braaaa...
- astrodust 10y ago
  BASIC did enough damage to programmers. It's good that it's dead. Don't bring it back. People mistake BASIC's simplicity with a feature. It's an atrocious language, it encourages the worst sorts of programming, and it's so feeble that doing anything useful in it is painful at best and discouraging at worst. On the C64 with limited memory BASIC was a lot better than nothing, but today, given the vast wealth of documentation, of videos that explain fundamental concepts, there's no need for something as dumbed down and useless as BASIC. Lua, Python, Node.js, Ruby, anything modern on the Pi is a vastly better learning experience because not only can you pick up the basics, but you can apply that to real-world problems, possibly even get a job, and carry on learning. With BASIC and hacking around in ignorance you're going to do everything wrong, and reversing all those bad habits is really tough to do. It takes years. If you want to learn how to program the C64, stick to assembly. This used to be a dark art back in the 1980s, reference material was thin, examples scarce, but now there's an enormous wealth of that you can pick apart and learn from.

by nom 10y ago

verisimilidude 10y ago

The C-64 was my introduction to computing and programming as well. My uncle, a newly minted engineer at the time, brought one to our house when I was about three years old and just left it. This was incredibly fortunate given how poor my family was at the time. Some of the first words I learned how to spell were LOAD and RUN thanks to the BASIC prompt.

nom 10y ago
wow it sounds like you've been really lucky! Also: I'm now imagining a 3 year old, yelling 'Mama LOAD "*",8,1'

KineticTroi 10y ago

I often think of the Raspberry PI as the modern equivalent to the c64. Affordable, powerful, educational. It would be great to develop a specialized Raspberry PI BASIC in tribute to Blitz or QBASIC.

nom 10y ago
You made me curious and something like that already exists (who would've thought!). RetroPie [1] comes with the VICE [2] emulator. [1] https://retropie.org.uk https://retropie.org.uk [2] http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/ http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/
SyneRyder 10y ago
Not quite what you're after, but it might also be worth looking at Xojo, which is a kind of Visual Basic clone that also compiles apps for the Raspberry Pi. (Then if you catch the Xojo bug, it also compiles to iOS and desktop Windows/Mac/Linux.) https://www.xojo.com https://www.xojo.com
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "It would be great to develop a specialized Raspberry PI BASIC in tribute to Blitz or QBASIC." You may find something you like here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-basic/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-bas... Also, the following project is only loosely related to your post, but you might like to know about it too: http://eluabrain.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/brainz-brainz-braaaaaaaaainz.html http://eluabrain.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/brainz-brainz-braaaa...
astrodust 10y ago
BASIC did enough damage to programmers. It's good that it's dead. Don't bring it back. People mistake BASIC's simplicity with a feature. It's an atrocious language, it encourages the worst sorts of programming, and it's so feeble that doing anything useful in it is painful at best and discouraging at worst. On the C64 with limited memory BASIC was a lot better than nothing, but today, given the vast wealth of documentation, of videos that explain fundamental concepts, there's no need for something as dumbed down and useless as BASIC. Lua, Python, Node.js, Ruby, anything modern on the Pi is a vastly better learning experience because not only can you pick up the basics, but you can apply that to real-world problems, possibly even get a job, and carry on learning. With BASIC and hacking around in ignorance you're going to do everything wrong, and reversing all those bad habits is really tough to do. It takes years. If you want to learn how to program the C64, stick to assembly. This used to be a dark art back in the 1980s, reference material was thin, examples scarce, but now there's an enormous wealth of that you can pick apart and learn from.