6 ms·

Birth of BASIC (2014) [video]

42 points by AlexeyBrin 6y ago

tasty_freeze 6y ago
For anyone who has only used Microsoft dialect BASICs, seeing the original Dartmouth BASIC features might be surprising. I learned BASIC on a Wang 2200 computer (circa 1973), which followed Dartmouth BASIC pretty closely and added a ton of quirky Wang-specific features on top. The following, as far as I recall, would have been valid in the 1964 Dartmouth BASIC: 10 DIM A(5,5), B(5,5), C(5,5) 20 MAT READ A,B 30 DATA <a list of numbers for matrix A and B here> 40 MAT C=A*B:REM matrix multiply 50 MAT PRINT C:REM print the contents of C in five rows 60 MAT C=A*(2):REM scalar multiply 70 MAT C=A+B:REM matrix addition 80 MAT C=A-B:REM matrix subtaction 90 MAT C=TRN(A):REM matrix transpose 100 REM C=IDN:REM fill C with identity matrix 110 REM C=ZER:REM fill C with zeros 120 REM C=INV(A),D: REM invert A, and put determinant in variable D By combining INV with matrix multiply, it was a snap to solve systems of linear equations. The examples above are all square matrices, but many of the actions worked on non-square matrices too. It was also possible to change the dimensions of a matrix so long as the total number of elements was the same or less than what was allocated by the original DIM statement.
- tasty_freeze 6y ago
  Lines 100-120 were intended to start with MAT C=..., but I had a thinko and typed REM instead.
DannyB2 6y ago
10 INVENT NEW LANGUAGE 20 GOSUB 10 30 PROFIT
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Captain Nitpick here. That will eventually run out of memory and crash, because of GOSUB instead of GOTO. Clever, though...
  - DannyB2 6y ago
    Eventually, when it reaches the obvious RETURN statement, it should then get to the PROFIT. And memory? Memory is unlimited! This is Java! Oh, wait, it's BASIC, memory isn't unlimited. Nevermind.
    - egypturnash 6y ago
      10 INVENT NEW LANGUAGE 20 REM ??? 30 GOSUB 10 40 PROFIT
vanilla-almond 6y ago
Something I've wanted to asked ask for a while: who is programming in Basic today? The language has evolved substantially from its early days and there are many dialects. But it's rare to hear someone admit they program in Basic (at least on this forum). Programmers can be quite judgemental about choice of programming language. Does anyone want to share their reason for using Basic? It is by choice or by necessity (e.g. maintaining a legacy codebase)? Are there modern incarnations of the language that you feel are overlooked? (For example, I recently came across Pure Basic, a cross-platform compiler that lets you build self-contained binaries for Windows, Mac and Linux).
- nanomonkey 6y ago
  As of April, you can now program for the Nintendo Switch in SmileBASIC 4 [https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/smilebasic-4-switch/ https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/smilebasic-4-switch/]. Back in 2010 I was writing production code in VB6 on a Inventory management and ERP system that ended up being sold off when the original developer decided to retire. As far as I know that piece of software is still being used today and runs quite a number of restaurants, airline catering companies and amusement parks.
- gramie 6y ago
  There is also a free (except for iOS) version of BASIC (https://www.b4x.com/ https://www.b4x.com/) that compiles to executables that run on Android, iOS, Windows, OSX, Linux, etc. It's very much like Visual Basic, including a visual UI editor, and has a very strong community. The developer (one guy!) often answers questions in the forums.
- sedatk 6y ago
  VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is still a thing. My brother is teaching Decision Support Systems using Excel/VBA and he says it's the most practical way to do it.
- BasicBardo 6y ago
  I do! My company runs a legacy Multivalue database (jBASE) which uses jBASIC as the native programming language. The dialect that we program in has a lot of the classic attributes of BASIC but it's also been modernized quite a bit. It's still a procedural language and there's a lot more GOTOs in the codebase than I'd like but it's got a native REST interface and runs on a modern OS. There's actually a good number of businesses that run Multivalue databases like this. They all use similar dialects of BASIC with various levels of enhancements. The databases are noSQL from before SQL was really a thing.
simonh 6y ago
I think what was great about BASIC back in the day on early home computers was that it gave direct access to the hardware. You could PEEK or POKE to any address in memory and write programs that could manipulate any of the features of any attached hardware at the lowest level with individual commands. You didn't even have to write a program, but could just invoke commands imperatively. It was an incredible learning environment. I remember hacking a BBC Micro so that it mapped system memory directly into the video display, so the colour of each pixel on the screen represented a byte of memory, which changed in realtime. Learning Pascal on a Prime minicomputer was fine, but never had the same fun factor.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  This was more a function of how the systems were wired than anything to do with BASIC per se. Hardware-specific features were mapped to physical memory addresses, and the PEEK and POKE commands could be used to interact with those addresses. Many BASIC implementations also had commands to branch to machine-language subroutines or to perform machine-dependent IO.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  The feedback loop with BASIC was faster. You could execute the program directly from the editor (if not from an interactive prompt, our computer, a Tandy 1000 circa 1988/1989, didn't have that though). Even without the prompt, it was very close to the REPL experience (write a line or two, hit F5 to run it, see the result, edit, repeat). I didn't come to other languages until later, but even so the feedback loop was just slower: bring up editor, write code, save, compile, run, repeat. That extra bit of friction is noticeable after a while. And then there's just what makes a minimum viable program. In C it's something like: #include <stdio.h> int main(void) { printf("Hello, World!"); return 0; } In BASIC it's: 10 PRINT "Hello, World!" 4 extra lines don't seem like much, but to the novice it can be a massive difference. Especially when all that other stuff seems like magic, versus the BASIC program which just gets to the point ("I want to print something, so I tell it to print and it does.").
  - blackrock 6y ago
cgh 6y ago
One of the advantages of the Commodore 64 was its crappy BASIC dialect. To do anything with graphics or sound, you had to pretty much learn assembly. I'm pretty sure that whoever decided to stick Commodore BASIC v2 in that thing had no idea they were creating an entire generation of assembly programmers.
- steve_taylor 6y ago
  It certainly made me want to learn assembly, but I didn't have access to the Programmer's Reference Guide or any other useful resources for assembly programming, let alone an assembler cart. At the same time, my school had a room full of Amstrad CPC 6128 computers with a very rich BASIC dialect that was good enough for making decent games. I'm very fond of that machine, but they're extremely hard to come by now, as are the 3 inch disks.
  - sedatk 6y ago
    It's possible to adapt CPC6128 to the modern world. I have a CPC6128 with an external 3.5" drive attached. There are even SD card modules for 6128, fyi :)
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Same applies to the Speccy, but learning anything but what came in the box was a challenge. By the time I finally started seeing some Assembly books and the Input magazines on a couple of stores, the 16 bit home chapter was already into its way. Most of the spectrum books that I own have been bought when hunting for old books.
- soylentcola 6y ago
  We had a C=128 which added a whole bunch of additional options that could be used in BASIC programs. While grade-school me was completely baffled by assembly (wasn't in the manual that came with our used computer) it introduced me to the basics of sound synthesizers. You could define a wave pattern (square, sawtooth, triangle, ring, etc.), attack, decay, sustain, release, and pulse width with that version of BASIC and generate all sorts of sounds and music. I spent loads of time messing around with using variables for these different parameters to see how I could generate the coolest/most annoying sounds. Graphics were also a lot easier to play around with (it even had an interactive sprite editor built-in) but that's a whole other story.
sergius 6y ago
Imagine if they had put a Forth interpreter instead? That would have been real genius... but alas we got a crappy BASIC because everyone else had one.
- nickt 6y ago
  Like the Jupiter Ace? http://www.jupiter-ace.co.uk/ http://www.jupiter-ace.co.uk/
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  To be clear, BASIC came out in 1964 versus 1970 for Forth. I'm not sure how the creators of BASIC could've used Forth instead.
  - sergius 6y ago
    In popular micros that came out in 1980? In 1970 you still huge expensive boxes as computers...
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Besides the Jupiter Ace pointed about, I used to see ads in YourSinclair and Crash about Forth units to plug into expansion ports.
  - sergius 6y ago
    Basic was a real bad idea to begin with...

42 points by AlexeyBrin 6y ago

For anyone who has only used Microsoft dialect BASICs, seeing the original Dartmouth BASIC features might be surprising. I learned BASIC on a Wang 2200 computer (circa 1973), which followed Dartmouth BASIC pretty closely and added a ton of quirky Wang-specific features on top. The following, as far as I recall, would have been valid in the 1964 Dartmouth BASIC: 10 DIM A(5,5), B(5,5), C(5,5) 20 MAT READ A,B 30 DATA <a list of numbers for matrix A and B here> 40 MAT C=A*B:REM matrix multiply 50 MAT PRINT C:REM print the contents of C in five rows 60 MAT C=A*(2):REM scalar multiply 70 MAT C=A+B:REM matrix addition 80 MAT C=A-B:REM matrix subtaction 90 MAT C=TRN(A):REM matrix transpose 100 REM C=IDN:REM fill C with identity matrix 110 REM C=ZER:REM fill C with zeros 120 REM C=INV(A),D: REM invert A, and put determinant in variable D By combining INV with matrix multiply, it was a snap to solve systems of linear equations. The examples above are all square matrices, but many of the actions worked on non-square matrices too. It was also possible to change the dimensions of a matrix so long as the total number of elements was the same or less than what was allocated by the original DIM statement.

tasty_freeze 6y ago
Lines 100-120 were intended to start with MAT C=..., but I had a thinko and typed REM instead.

DannyB2 6y ago

10 INVENT NEW LANGUAGE 20 GOSUB 10 30 PROFIT

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Captain Nitpick here. That will eventually run out of memory and crash, because of GOSUB instead of GOTO. Clever, though...
- DannyB2 6y ago
  Eventually, when it reaches the obvious RETURN statement, it should then get to the PROFIT. And memory? Memory is unlimited! This is Java! Oh, wait, it's BASIC, memory isn't unlimited. Nevermind.
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    10 INVENT NEW LANGUAGE 20 REM ??? 30 GOSUB 10 40 PROFIT

vanilla-almond 6y ago

Something I've wanted to asked ask for a while: who is programming in Basic today? The language has evolved substantially from its early days and there are many dialects. But it's rare to hear someone admit they program in Basic (at least on this forum). Programmers can be quite judgemental about choice of programming language. Does anyone want to share their reason for using Basic? It is by choice or by necessity (e.g. maintaining a legacy codebase)? Are there modern incarnations of the language that you feel are overlooked? (For example, I recently came across Pure Basic, a cross-platform compiler that lets you build self-contained binaries for Windows, Mac and Linux).

nanomonkey 6y ago
As of April, you can now program for the Nintendo Switch in SmileBASIC 4 [https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/smilebasic-4-switch/ https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/smilebasic-4-switch/]. Back in 2010 I was writing production code in VB6 on a Inventory management and ERP system that ended up being sold off when the original developer decided to retire. As far as I know that piece of software is still being used today and runs quite a number of restaurants, airline catering companies and amusement parks.
gramie 6y ago
There is also a free (except for iOS) version of BASIC (https://www.b4x.com/ https://www.b4x.com/) that compiles to executables that run on Android, iOS, Windows, OSX, Linux, etc. It's very much like Visual Basic, including a visual UI editor, and has a very strong community. The developer (one guy!) often answers questions in the forums.
sedatk 6y ago
VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is still a thing. My brother is teaching Decision Support Systems using Excel/VBA and he says it's the most practical way to do it.
BasicBardo 6y ago
I do! My company runs a legacy Multivalue database (jBASE) which uses jBASIC as the native programming language. The dialect that we program in has a lot of the classic attributes of BASIC but it's also been modernized quite a bit. It's still a procedural language and there's a lot more GOTOs in the codebase than I'd like but it's got a native REST interface and runs on a modern OS. There's actually a good number of businesses that run Multivalue databases like this. They all use similar dialects of BASIC with various levels of enhancements. The databases are noSQL from before SQL was really a thing.

simonh 6y ago

I think what was great about BASIC back in the day on early home computers was that it gave direct access to the hardware. You could PEEK or POKE to any address in memory and write programs that could manipulate any of the features of any attached hardware at the lowest level with individual commands. You didn't even have to write a program, but could just invoke commands imperatively. It was an incredible learning environment. I remember hacking a BBC Micro so that it mapped system memory directly into the video display, so the colour of each pixel on the screen represented a byte of memory, which changed in realtime. Learning Pascal on a Prime minicomputer was fine, but never had the same fun factor.

zozbot234 6y ago
This was more a function of how the systems were wired than anything to do with BASIC per se. Hardware-specific features were mapped to physical memory addresses, and the PEEK and POKE commands could be used to interact with those addresses. Many BASIC implementations also had commands to branch to machine-language subroutines or to perform machine-dependent IO.
Jtsummers 6y ago
The feedback loop with BASIC was faster. You could execute the program directly from the editor (if not from an interactive prompt, our computer, a Tandy 1000 circa 1988/1989, didn't have that though). Even without the prompt, it was very close to the REPL experience (write a line or two, hit F5 to run it, see the result, edit, repeat). I didn't come to other languages until later, but even so the feedback loop was just slower: bring up editor, write code, save, compile, run, repeat. That extra bit of friction is noticeable after a while. And then there's just what makes a minimum viable program. In C it's something like: #include <stdio.h> int main(void) { printf("Hello, World!"); return 0; } In BASIC it's: 10 PRINT "Hello, World!" 4 extra lines don't seem like much, but to the novice it can be a massive difference. Especially when all that other stuff seems like magic, versus the BASIC program which just gets to the point ("I want to print something, so I tell it to print and it does.").
- blackrock 6y ago

cgh 6y ago

One of the advantages of the Commodore 64 was its crappy BASIC dialect. To do anything with graphics or sound, you had to pretty much learn assembly. I'm pretty sure that whoever decided to stick Commodore BASIC v2 in that thing had no idea they were creating an entire generation of assembly programmers.

steve_taylor 6y ago
It certainly made me want to learn assembly, but I didn't have access to the Programmer's Reference Guide or any other useful resources for assembly programming, let alone an assembler cart. At the same time, my school had a room full of Amstrad CPC 6128 computers with a very rich BASIC dialect that was good enough for making decent games. I'm very fond of that machine, but they're extremely hard to come by now, as are the 3 inch disks.
- sedatk 6y ago
  It's possible to adapt CPC6128 to the modern world. I have a CPC6128 with an external 3.5" drive attached. There are even SD card modules for 6128, fyi :)
pjmlp 6y ago
Same applies to the Speccy, but learning anything but what came in the box was a challenge. By the time I finally started seeing some Assembly books and the Input magazines on a couple of stores, the 16 bit home chapter was already into its way. Most of the spectrum books that I own have been bought when hunting for old books.
soylentcola 6y ago
We had a C=128 which added a whole bunch of additional options that could be used in BASIC programs. While grade-school me was completely baffled by assembly (wasn't in the manual that came with our used computer) it introduced me to the basics of sound synthesizers. You could define a wave pattern (square, sawtooth, triangle, ring, etc.), attack, decay, sustain, release, and pulse width with that version of BASIC and generate all sorts of sounds and music. I spent loads of time messing around with using variables for these different parameters to see how I could generate the coolest/most annoying sounds. Graphics were also a lot easier to play around with (it even had an interactive sprite editor built-in) but that's a whole other story.

sergius 6y ago

Imagine if they had put a Forth interpreter instead? That would have been real genius... but alas we got a crappy BASIC because everyone else had one.

nickt 6y ago
Like the Jupiter Ace? http://www.jupiter-ace.co.uk/ http://www.jupiter-ace.co.uk/
Jtsummers 6y ago
To be clear, BASIC came out in 1964 versus 1970 for Forth. I'm not sure how the creators of BASIC could've used Forth instead.
- sergius 6y ago
  In popular micros that came out in 1980? In 1970 you still huge expensive boxes as computers...
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Besides the Jupiter Ace pointed about, I used to see ads in YourSinclair and Crash about Forth units to plug into expansion ports.
- sergius 6y ago
  Basic was a real bad idea to begin with...