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BASIC was a huge turn off for me as a kid in the 90s. I hated it. I hated having to deal with the line numbers. I hated everything about it, except that it let
by linkmotif 8y ago
BASIC was a huge turn off for me as a kid in the 90s. I hated it. I hated having to deal with the line numbers. I hated everything about it, except that it let you write a program. Whenever I would look at a long BASIC program I would think, “how the hell did anyone write this?” To this day I don’t understand how people liked this language. I guess it’s easier than assembly, which also has line numbers. And I absolutely loved programming and computers. I remember reading a C++ book around 1997 and even though I couldn’t get my hands on a compiler then, it was liberating to just read about.
- pjmlp 8y agoBecause we only got to do it during the 8 bit era, there were tons of books and magazine listings to learn it, and for many of us it was the only way to get software. 16 bit home computers already had structured BASIC compilers, producing native code, for example I learned Turbo Basic in 1990. Here is how it looked like, https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandBorsHandbook1987_15768512 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandBorsHandbook198... Amiga demoscene was presented with AMOS. Just to cite those which I had more experience with.
- linkmotif 8y agoThanks for the perspective and especially the book link. I looked around at the book. Looks really nice. I couldn’t have afforded this compiler back in the day though :). Incredible all these compilers/interpreters are free now.
- tenebrisalietum 8y agoEveryone liked BASIC for 2 reasons, if they did not have much prior exposure to a Unix-like or VAX-like multiuser/multitasking environment in the 80's: - BASiC was a very interactive environment. This new and awesome in the 80s. You could enter programs, run them immediately, edit, run, repeat without having to go through a compilation step. - BASIC worked without any planning whatsoever. You don't need to declare variables, or even arrays if you only use subscripts 1-10. Strings handled automatically. So it was really fun to play with. You could make your new computer do something rather quickly, and refine it over time. Line numbers were needed on the old 8-bit systems that didn't have full screen text editors with copy/paste built in. It's how you told BASIC where to put new lines in the program. Admittedly it was certainly getting long in the tooth in the 90's though.
- linkmotif 8y agoThanks for this perspective. I guess I’m just one generation late so I never got it. Admittedly most of my BASIC experience was on graphing calculators :)