4 ms·

A fun semi-related discussion 5 months ago with lots of anecdotes that also links several BASICs that are still alive: 2022-08-04 https://news.ycombinator.com/

A fun semi-related discussion 5 months ago with lots of anecdotes that also links several BASICs that are still alive: 2022-08-04 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32349516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32349516 All about QBasic and QuickBasic

monero-xmr 4y ago
Cut my teeth learning basic on a TI83 and an instruction manual with tiny type. My goal was to make programs for my algebra test to “cheat”. How silly of me - learning the subject well enough to create a program for it was the best way to study.
- dalke 4y ago
  That's the premise of "Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine", part of a series I enjoyed in elementary school around 1980, but written in 1958. That book is digitized at Archive.org (because of course it is), so I can quote https://archive.org/details/dannydunnhomewor00will/page/136/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/dannydunnhomewor00will/page/136/... after the kids have gotten an award for doing more and harder homework than the rest of the class, through the use of the "Miniac" computer, which they had programmed to do their homework. Professor Bullfich starts, "Naturally, in order to feed information into the computer you had to know it yourselves. And in order to give the machine the proper instructions for solving problems, you had to know how to solve them yourselves. So, of course, you had to do homework -- and plenty of it." "Why, simply programming a problem is homework," Dr. Grimes put in. Looking through it now, they got help from a couple of people affiliated with IBM. The authors also write "In all fairness to Professor Bullfich and Dr. Grimes, we wish to point out their position on homework is supported by Bulletin 1248-3 of the Education Service Bureau, University of Pennsylvania." For what it's worth, I can't find that bulletin. https://archive.org/details/sim_childhood-education_1957-01_33_5/page/220/mode/2up?q=Bulletin https://archive.org/details/sim_childhood-education_1957-01_... informs me the title was "What About Homework?" Thank you for bringing up that old memory!

monero-xmr 4y ago

Cut my teeth learning basic on a TI83 and an instruction manual with tiny type. My goal was to make programs for my algebra test to “cheat”. How silly of me - learning the subject well enough to create a program for it was the best way to study.

dalke 4y ago
That's the premise of "Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine", part of a series I enjoyed in elementary school around 1980, but written in 1958. That book is digitized at Archive.org (because of course it is), so I can quote https://archive.org/details/dannydunnhomewor00will/page/136/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/dannydunnhomewor00will/page/136/... after the kids have gotten an award for doing more and harder homework than the rest of the class, through the use of the "Miniac" computer, which they had programmed to do their homework. Professor Bullfich starts, "Naturally, in order to feed information into the computer you had to know it yourselves. And in order to give the machine the proper instructions for solving problems, you had to know how to solve them yourselves. So, of course, you had to do homework -- and plenty of it." "Why, simply programming a problem is homework," Dr. Grimes put in. Looking through it now, they got help from a couple of people affiliated with IBM. The authors also write "In all fairness to Professor Bullfich and Dr. Grimes, we wish to point out their position on homework is supported by Bulletin 1248-3 of the Education Service Bureau, University of Pennsylvania." For what it's worth, I can't find that bulletin. https://archive.org/details/sim_childhood-education_1957-01_33_5/page/220/mode/2up?q=Bulletin https://archive.org/details/sim_childhood-education_1957-01_... informs me the title was "What About Homework?" Thank you for bringing up that old memory!