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BASIC on those systems was rubbish, every platform had its own dialect, some like Commodore BASIC 2.0 didn't provide full support for hardware capabilities, the

BASIC on those systems was rubbish, every platform had its own dialect, some like Commodore BASIC 2.0 didn't provide full support for hardware capabilities, the systems shipped without a compiler. As a consequence, when you got your first computer you learned the bare minimum through BASIC and then quickly moved on to assembler in order to get the efficiency and be able to make the hardware do something useful. Many of us have fond memories if BASIC, but let's face it, it was, well, quite basic (pun intended).

C1sc0cat 8y ago
Actually the core of all those early systems was Microsoft Basic even the original IBM PC had a Basic in ROM. If you wanted low-level access you just poked Assembly code Most of the really early Home Pc's had such limited hardware that running a compiler was not practical - you could get compilers for CPM systems but they where more professional systems with a price tag to match. Even than a top of the line Cromecho s100 was a lot cheaper than say a pdp11/03