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I learned BBC Basic. When I got to university I found it hard to unlearn line numbers. Yep, line numbers and by implication GOTO. Also had to unlearn BBC ADFS

I learned BBC Basic. When I got to university I found it hard to unlearn line numbers. Yep, line numbers and by implication GOTO. Also had to unlearn BBC ADFS directories. True hierarchical directories were hard to comprehend because I had learned ADFS directories, where you have 26 of them, they are single letter prefixes to files and not hierarchical. Any talk of BASIC being useful is nonsense. BASIC was pushed on to the home micro scene by Microsoft. This held us back.

bluescrn 6y ago
8-bit variants of BASIC introduced a generation of programmers (often kids/teenagers) to fundamental programming concepts - variables, loops, conditionals - and allowed them to easily experiment with early computer graphics and audio. The benefits of this initial learning/experimentation vastly outweighed any bad habits picked up or 'unlearning' required.
- phpnode 6y ago
  it's not "unlearning" anyway, it's just "learning". I'm trying to imagine how many other things this person would have had to "unlearn" in tech since BBC Basic came out.
Mauricebranagh 6y ago
In the early days you where coding Assembly by hand loading via switches. Microsoft got started as a language developer which made every thing a lot more accessible.
vidarh 6y ago
Microsoft became successful because everyone wanted BASIC, and they were the main vendor able to quickly provide compact versions for the main CPUs in use. The idea they "pushed it" onto the home micro scene is nonsense - Microsoft was small enough to be pushed around by much larger vendors at the time, and were cheap. Jack Tramiel at Commodore infamously received an offer for $3 per unit, and supposedly countered with a $25k offer for a perpetual license (they did end up negotiating a new agreement when releasing the C128, as the license only applied to versions of BASIC already released at the time it was entered into, but by then they'd shipped millions of units).
dspillett 6y ago
> where you have 26 of them, they are single letter prefixes to files and not hierarchical ADFS supported hierarchical directories with name limits the same as files (IIRC 10 characters?). Sounds like you are thinking of the earlier DFS. > hard to unlearn line numbers That seems odd. Where was your sticking point with them? I started out with BBC BASIC, eventually with a little 6502 assembly for a few bits & bobs, and had no trouble at all seeing the benefit of dropping that bit of structure when I started tinkering with QuickBasic and then C on a PC. In fact if you had a BBC machine new enough to support ADFS, then you had one with a BBC BASIC version that supported procedures and functions in a way that allowed line numbers to be effectively ignored (no GOTO/GOSUB needed) in many cases. In fact there were methods to write without them (write the code in a text editor, like the one built in to the Master series, I forget its name, then TYPE it from the file to "add" the line numbers for the interpreter to like).
goatinaboat 6y ago
I found it hard to unlearn line numbers. Yep, line numbers and by implication GOTO. BBC Basic let you very easily write structured programs without a single GOTO if you wanted.
musicale 6y ago
> Any talk of BASIC being useful is nonsense. BASIC was pushed on to the home micro scene by Microsoft. This held us back. BASIC was invented at Dartmouth in the 1960s[1] as a simplified programming language for beginners, and was well-suited to microcomputers because of its interactive user friendliness and minimal resource requirements. Microsoft deserves credit for fitting a usable computer language into a few kilobytes (!) of memory. Alternatives such as Forth or assembly language were not as beginner friendly, and languages like Pascal or C had higher RAM and storage requirements and were not interactive like BASIC. BBC BASIC was a powerful and friendly environment that was neither written by nor "pushed" by Microsoft. Rather, it was pushed by the BBC, resulting in a generation of computer enthusiasts and professionals. [1] https://time.com/69316/basic/ https://time.com/69316/basic/
- guenthert 6y ago
  Microsoft might not have been the one doing the pushing, but claiming the customers wanted it is only telling half the truth at best. I think it's fair to say that most customers then were unaware of the alternatives and the decision was made by the manufacturers of those home computers. BASIC might very well have been the best choice for those casually interested in computers. Educators would have preferred others though (Pascal, Scheme and COMAL come to mind). FORTH would have scared away most customers, but amazed and inspired others (I sadly discovered it only after its prime). Turbo Pascal didn't require (much) more memory than elaborate BASIC implementations and ran at reasonable speed even on a Z80. Not quite the same interactivity of an interpreter perhaps, but not much behind. It came late to the scene though.
  - musicale 6y ago
    Apple had a Pascal implementation, but it required floppy disks and more memory. They also had Logo and possibly other languages. Logo is an interesting alternative to BASIC since it's beginner-friendly. Microsoft (and other companies such as Digital Research et al.) supplied a number of languages other than BASIC (Pascal, Fortran, COBOL...) but they typically required more resources and were less novice-friendly. BASIC worked out of ROM and a few kilobytes of RAM, and was easy to learn. As you note, Turbo Pascal - a nice environment with a fast one-pass compiler - came out later. It does seem to have had a cassette version at some point, but it required more RAM than BASIC and was harder to learn. Nonetheless it was highly successful and its descendant Delphi is still used today. It's hard to get Scheme to run in a few kilobytes, but it would be fun to try. Primitive LISPs did seem to exist on microcomputers but only gave you a few atoms and cons cells because of memory limits. COMAL was largely based on BASIC but never caught on as widely. In any case, I don't think Microsoft gets the credit or the blame for BBC BASIC. (There were also versions of microcomputer BASICs from companies other than Microsoft, dating to the early 1970s.) disclaimer: I've only seen it running in an emulator like the BBC Micro bot; it looks cool though. ;-)
teh_klev 6y ago
> BASIC was pushed on to the home micro scene by Microsoft BASIC existed on many different platforms (including mainframe and minicomputers) long before MS got in on the act (see also the sibling comment here about when BASIC was invented). > Any talk of BASIC being useful is nonsense. Now, this is nonsense. I started with Apple BASIC in 1979, then simply due to curiosity learned many other languages (many have fallen by the wayside, 6502, FORTH, Pascal, COBOL) and it bootstrapped my career as a software developer which I still do to this day (like many others of my generation). All your other comments about having to "unlearn" stuff was perhaps your problem; apropos directory representations, by 1987 due to work and college I worked with multiple different OS directory mechanisms including ADFS, RDOS, AOS, VMS, CP/M, MSDOS and UNIX. Not that big of a deal and just made the week more interesting.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> I learned BBC Basic. When I got to university I found it hard to unlearn line numbers. The problem isn't learning BASIC, it's learning it (or anything else) exclusively for a long time. I learned 8-bit microcomputer BASIC first, too (several different dialects). And then, within a handful of years of being exposed to BASIC, I also learned some Logo, quite a lot of Turbo Pascal, DOS batch programming, and probably one or two other things I'm forgetting at the moment. None of them were really hard transitions, but I was learning them when I had a concept of programming but not a completely ossified one from long and exclusive exposure to a single language family. > Any talk of BASIC being useful is nonsense. Of all the many languages I learned before learning assembly, unstructured BASIC did the most to prepare me for assembly, so I think it was quite useful.

bluescrn 6y ago

8-bit variants of BASIC introduced a generation of programmers (often kids/teenagers) to fundamental programming concepts - variables, loops, conditionals - and allowed them to easily experiment with early computer graphics and audio. The benefits of this initial learning/experimentation vastly outweighed any bad habits picked up or 'unlearning' required.

phpnode 6y ago
it's not "unlearning" anyway, it's just "learning". I'm trying to imagine how many other things this person would have had to "unlearn" in tech since BBC Basic came out.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago

In the early days you where coding Assembly by hand loading via switches. Microsoft got started as a language developer which made every thing a lot more accessible.

vidarh 6y ago

Microsoft became successful because everyone wanted BASIC, and they were the main vendor able to quickly provide compact versions for the main CPUs in use. The idea they "pushed it" onto the home micro scene is nonsense - Microsoft was small enough to be pushed around by much larger vendors at the time, and were cheap. Jack Tramiel at Commodore infamously received an offer for $3 per unit, and supposedly countered with a $25k offer for a perpetual license (they did end up negotiating a new agreement when releasing the C128, as the license only applied to versions of BASIC already released at the time it was entered into, but by then they'd shipped millions of units).

dspillett 6y ago

> where you have 26 of them, they are single letter prefixes to files and not hierarchical ADFS supported hierarchical directories with name limits the same as files (IIRC 10 characters?). Sounds like you are thinking of the earlier DFS. > hard to unlearn line numbers That seems odd. Where was your sticking point with them? I started out with BBC BASIC, eventually with a little 6502 assembly for a few bits & bobs, and had no trouble at all seeing the benefit of dropping that bit of structure when I started tinkering with QuickBasic and then C on a PC. In fact if you had a BBC machine new enough to support ADFS, then you had one with a BBC BASIC version that supported procedures and functions in a way that allowed line numbers to be effectively ignored (no GOTO/GOSUB needed) in many cases. In fact there were methods to write without them (write the code in a text editor, like the one built in to the Master series, I forget its name, then TYPE it from the file to "add" the line numbers for the interpreter to like).

goatinaboat 6y ago

I found it hard to unlearn line numbers. Yep, line numbers and by implication GOTO. BBC Basic let you very easily write structured programs without a single GOTO if you wanted.

musicale 6y ago

> Any talk of BASIC being useful is nonsense. BASIC was pushed on to the home micro scene by Microsoft. This held us back. BASIC was invented at Dartmouth in the 1960s[1] as a simplified programming language for beginners, and was well-suited to microcomputers because of its interactive user friendliness and minimal resource requirements. Microsoft deserves credit for fitting a usable computer language into a few kilobytes (!) of memory. Alternatives such as Forth or assembly language were not as beginner friendly, and languages like Pascal or C had higher RAM and storage requirements and were not interactive like BASIC. BBC BASIC was a powerful and friendly environment that was neither written by nor "pushed" by Microsoft. Rather, it was pushed by the BBC, resulting in a generation of computer enthusiasts and professionals. [1] https://time.com/69316/basic/ https://time.com/69316/basic/

guenthert 6y ago
Microsoft might not have been the one doing the pushing, but claiming the customers wanted it is only telling half the truth at best. I think it's fair to say that most customers then were unaware of the alternatives and the decision was made by the manufacturers of those home computers. BASIC might very well have been the best choice for those casually interested in computers. Educators would have preferred others though (Pascal, Scheme and COMAL come to mind). FORTH would have scared away most customers, but amazed and inspired others (I sadly discovered it only after its prime). Turbo Pascal didn't require (much) more memory than elaborate BASIC implementations and ran at reasonable speed even on a Z80. Not quite the same interactivity of an interpreter perhaps, but not much behind. It came late to the scene though.
- musicale 6y ago
  Apple had a Pascal implementation, but it required floppy disks and more memory. They also had Logo and possibly other languages. Logo is an interesting alternative to BASIC since it's beginner-friendly. Microsoft (and other companies such as Digital Research et al.) supplied a number of languages other than BASIC (Pascal, Fortran, COBOL...) but they typically required more resources and were less novice-friendly. BASIC worked out of ROM and a few kilobytes of RAM, and was easy to learn. As you note, Turbo Pascal - a nice environment with a fast one-pass compiler - came out later. It does seem to have had a cassette version at some point, but it required more RAM than BASIC and was harder to learn. Nonetheless it was highly successful and its descendant Delphi is still used today. It's hard to get Scheme to run in a few kilobytes, but it would be fun to try. Primitive LISPs did seem to exist on microcomputers but only gave you a few atoms and cons cells because of memory limits. COMAL was largely based on BASIC but never caught on as widely. In any case, I don't think Microsoft gets the credit or the blame for BBC BASIC. (There were also versions of microcomputer BASICs from companies other than Microsoft, dating to the early 1970s.) disclaimer: I've only seen it running in an emulator like the BBC Micro bot; it looks cool though. ;-)

teh_klev 6y ago

> BASIC was pushed on to the home micro scene by Microsoft BASIC existed on many different platforms (including mainframe and minicomputers) long before MS got in on the act (see also the sibling comment here about when BASIC was invented). > Any talk of BASIC being useful is nonsense. Now, this is nonsense. I started with Apple BASIC in 1979, then simply due to curiosity learned many other languages (many have fallen by the wayside, 6502, FORTH, Pascal, COBOL) and it bootstrapped my career as a software developer which I still do to this day (like many others of my generation). All your other comments about having to "unlearn" stuff was perhaps your problem; apropos directory representations, by 1987 due to work and college I worked with multiple different OS directory mechanisms including ADFS, RDOS, AOS, VMS, CP/M, MSDOS and UNIX. Not that big of a deal and just made the week more interesting.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> I learned BBC Basic. When I got to university I found it hard to unlearn line numbers. The problem isn't learning BASIC, it's learning it (or anything else) exclusively for a long time. I learned 8-bit microcomputer BASIC first, too (several different dialects). And then, within a handful of years of being exposed to BASIC, I also learned some Logo, quite a lot of Turbo Pascal, DOS batch programming, and probably one or two other things I'm forgetting at the moment. None of them were really hard transitions, but I was learning them when I had a concept of programming but not a completely ossified one from long and exclusive exposure to a single language family. > Any talk of BASIC being useful is nonsense. Of all the many languages I learned before learning assembly, unstructured BASIC did the most to prepare me for assembly, so I think it was quite useful.