5 ms·
BASIC is 56 years old. Computers back then were not very fast, but interpretation was still viable.
by im3w1l 6y ago
BASIC is 56 years old. Computers back then were not very fast, but interpretation was still viable.
- usr1106 6y agoHave used it on 7KB RAM :) But to be fair the interpreter was in ROM, no idea how big that was.
- teddyh 6y agoROM was usually very slow, so all ROM content was usually copied to RAM before execution. RAM size was therefore still an issue.
- usr1106 6y agoI am pretty sure the PET-2001 didn't do that. 8 KB was all it had, about 1 KB was used by the operating system and 7 KB where available for programming. Actually something you would call byte code today, every basic command was 1 Byte. Just don't use labels with 4 or 5 characters, that wastes a lot of space! The first models came even with 4 KB RAM / 3 KB usable. Have never seen one of those, though.