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Commodore BASIC and Atari BASIC both had on screen editors where you could LIST your program on the screen and cursor up and down and change the code and when y

Commodore BASIC and Atari BASIC both had on screen editors where you could LIST your program on the screen and cursor up and down and change the code and when you pressed ENTER on a line, that line was re-entered into the program. Most other BASICs either required you to retype the entire line or had a line editor (eg. Applesoft BASIC). Atari BASIC could export a BASIC program as a text file using the LIST command. Once exported, an editor could be used to edit the code: LIST "D1:CODE.TXT" Or you could only output part of the program, say from line 1000 to 2000: LIST "D1:PARTIAL.TXT",1000,2000 Then you could use the ENTER command to bring that code back in. If a program was already there, the lines would simply be inserted. If the ENTERed code had a line number the same as the program in memory, it would replace the one already in memory. This was a great way to have a subroutine library, kind of like #include in C: ENTER "D1:PARTIAL.TXT" Outside of the examples above, it was difficult to have a full screen editor for BASIC because every line had to have a line number and you had to keep them organized. Also, the earliest microcomputers didn't have enough RAM for a full screen editor. The BBC Micro had a text editor in ROM but it couldn't be used for BASIC code. It could be used for other languages that were typically compiled. Most other languages either had a full screen editor or you could use any text editor. For example, Atari Logo has a full screen editor where you can edit one PROCEDURE at a time with: EDIT "MYPROCEDURE

jabbott1960 4y ago
"Commodore BASIC and Atari BASIC both had on screen editors where you could LIST your program on the screen and cursor up and down and change the code and when you pressed ENTER on a line, that line was re-entered into the program." My first employer (now known as GE Aviation) back in the 80s had mainframes from Honeywell that worked the same way. GE Aviation had started with GE computers, had sold off its mainframe GE business to Honeywell in the early 60s and GE Aviation continued to use derivative models for decades later. After listing a bunch of code (Fortran, of course) onto the screen, you'd cursor around making your changes, then hit the F1 key, which was programmed to send the screen one line at a time. God forbid that you'd spend a serious amount of time making those changes, because the modem (yep, we used a modem WITHIN the company) would time out, you'd disconnect and lose all your work. I forget how we edited non-code files, but I guess that they must have had line numbers too. Fortunately, we had systems other than the Honeywells that we could use (just about everything you could name), but most of the older internally developed software resided on the Honeywells.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Were they actual Honeywell systems? Honeywell bought out the computer divisions of both CCC (Computer Control Corporation) and GE (General Electric). Of course, the original BASIC was written on a GE-225.

jabbott1960 4y ago

"Commodore BASIC and Atari BASIC both had on screen editors where you could LIST your program on the screen and cursor up and down and change the code and when you pressed ENTER on a line, that line was re-entered into the program." My first employer (now known as GE Aviation) back in the 80s had mainframes from Honeywell that worked the same way. GE Aviation had started with GE computers, had sold off its mainframe GE business to Honeywell in the early 60s and GE Aviation continued to use derivative models for decades later. After listing a bunch of code (Fortran, of course) onto the screen, you'd cursor around making your changes, then hit the F1 key, which was programmed to send the screen one line at a time. God forbid that you'd spend a serious amount of time making those changes, because the modem (yep, we used a modem WITHIN the company) would time out, you'd disconnect and lose all your work. I forget how we edited non-code files, but I guess that they must have had line numbers too. Fortunately, we had systems other than the Honeywells that we could use (just about everything you could name), but most of the older internally developed software resided on the Honeywells.

timbit42 4y ago
Were they actual Honeywell systems? Honeywell bought out the computer divisions of both CCC (Computer Control Corporation) and GE (General Electric). Of course, the original BASIC was written on a GE-225.