7 ms·

In my opinion basic was not about the language. It wasn't that easy to understand, it wasn't that powerful, it was slow. It was about simplicity, it was easy

In my opinion basic was not about the language. It wasn't that easy to understand, it wasn't that powerful, it was slow. It was about simplicity, it was easy to make sound. To draw to the screen. It was about accessibility. Computers with it would boot right to a basic prompt. To use a computer was to program, and you were certain to naturally be exposed to programming and learn by doing rather than in a classroom. It was also about the fact you could easily open up other programs and read and modify them, much like older fashioned web and HTML. That's why these new basic projects fail so often. Python is simply better, and the ease of use of modern computers and phones means that the push basic used to have is just gone. Basic is being able to hear your data when you play it on a tape. It's about being able to cheat in your game by changing the code. It's typing code in from magazines and making games in math class. It's warm and fuzzy and you just can't bring it back.

zokier 4y ago
You are talking about different BASIC of different era, a decade before VB.
- m463 4y ago
  Actually, I was amazed the first time I used visual basic. This was probably the first version of visual basic and it was loooong ago. It let you do gui programming immediately, which was pretty new. You sort of intuitively learned event-driven programming in a few minutes. Drag a button on the screen, and with a click you could enter the code to run when it was pressed. In comparison, lots of systems since then have been pretty powerful, but you exchanged that for layers (and layers) of complexity that many people never got through. For example, I was pretty surprised the first time I used xcode. I thought it was apple - and they would make things easy. But in comparison to my first try at visual basic it was not intuitive, even after using it a while. (Did Steve Jobs ever try it?)
zabzonk 4y ago
actually, basic being so slow might be some kind of good feature. one of the first programs i ever wrote was an implementation of conway's game of life in basic on a z80 cp/m machine. i was unhappy with the results. this made me learn z80 assembler so i could get it to run much, much faster. but probably, looking back from old age, what i should have done was improve the algorithms i was using. i think basic is a good thing. perhaps a bit sad that people today do not have instant access to it.
- musicale 4y ago
  Maybe programming is dead due to app stores on one hand and AI on the other, but I still wish that web browsers included an easy and visible onramp to the rather capable and powerful JavaScript language that is built into every one of them.
lockhouse 4y ago
There’s nothing inherently slow about Basic. There were several implementations of Basic compilers that were plenty fast enough. Sure, they weren’t as fast as C, C++, Pascal, and Fortran, but they were good enough to make commercial software with.
- bhauer 4y ago
  Exactly. For example, GFA Basic, mentioned in the article, was quite fast, especially when compiled.
- musicale 4y ago
  The first BASIC implementations were compiled. In fact, compilation to machine code was one of the 4 original requirements for the language when it was first developed as a language for the Dartmouth College time-sharing system (efficiency and performance being directly related to the number of users that the system could support.) Many early BASIC implementations for microcomputers (such as tiny BASIC) prioritized memory usage over speed, so they tended to favor interpreters. But as others have noted, numerous compiled BASIC implementations existed as well.
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> It wasn't that easy to understand Out of all the complaints I've seen about BASIC/Visual Basic, this has never been one of them.
- Mizoguchi 4y ago
  Reading and debugging code filled with gotos can be a real nightmare.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    Later dialects of BASIC had code blocks and functions, making GOTO unnecessary. If you were using GOTO in your BASIC code in the 90s, you were doing it wrong.
    - skeeter2020 4y ago
      OK, then what about "On Error Resume Next"? ;)
      - ipaddr 4y ago
        try / catch replaces that today
        Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
        try / catch is almost he opposite of On Error Resume Next OERN would make it so uncaught errors were silently ignored and execution would just continue on the next line as if nothing wrong happened. This would likely result in more errors, which would then also be ignored.
        ptx 4y ago
        Frustratingly, the "on error goto" mechanism in Visual Basic is basically try/catch, except that the error object doesn't give you any kind of stack trace (not even the procedure or line number where the error occurred) so you have to constantly catch and rethrow errors just to add context information.
musicale 4y ago
> It wasn't that easy to understand Yes it was. https://www.dartmouth.edu/basicfifty/basicmanual_1964.pdf https://www.dartmouth.edu/basicfifty/basicmanual_1964.pdf
- czx4f4bd 4y ago
  These vintage BASIC games' code looks clear as mud to me. http://www.vintage-basic.net/bcg/superstartrek.bas http://www.vintage-basic.net/bcg/superstartrek.bas https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=111 https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=1...
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  This is 1964’s BASIC, and it is quite basic (if you pardon the pun). It had no form of functions or procedures, not even the most elementary “GOTO and remember where you came from so you can return here later”. If you look at a more modern Basic implementation, they are more complex, and tend to have pointless complexities like differentiating Sub and Function procedures or two call syntaxes.
  - musicale 4y ago
    That's kind of the point. BASIC was conceived as a simplified FORTRAN that beginners could learn in an afternoon but which was capable enough to enable them to write useful programs. 1964 BASIC did support single-line function definitions (see page 13.) Dartmouth BASIC kept evolving into the 1980s and seems to have turned into a pretty capable language that retained much of the accessibility of the original. I wonder what would have happened if True BASIC had been a free/open source project instead of proprietary software.
    - Kwpolska 4y ago
      > 1964 BASIC did support single-line function definitions (see page 13.) Those are extremely basic functions that can only do a simple math operation on a single number. This is a function in the math sense, but not useful for programming.

zokier 4y ago

You are talking about different BASIC of different era, a decade before VB.

m463 4y ago
Actually, I was amazed the first time I used visual basic. This was probably the first version of visual basic and it was loooong ago. It let you do gui programming immediately, which was pretty new. You sort of intuitively learned event-driven programming in a few minutes. Drag a button on the screen, and with a click you could enter the code to run when it was pressed. In comparison, lots of systems since then have been pretty powerful, but you exchanged that for layers (and layers) of complexity that many people never got through. For example, I was pretty surprised the first time I used xcode. I thought it was apple - and they would make things easy. But in comparison to my first try at visual basic it was not intuitive, even after using it a while. (Did Steve Jobs ever try it?)

zabzonk 4y ago

actually, basic being so slow might be some kind of good feature. one of the first programs i ever wrote was an implementation of conway's game of life in basic on a z80 cp/m machine. i was unhappy with the results. this made me learn z80 assembler so i could get it to run much, much faster. but probably, looking back from old age, what i should have done was improve the algorithms i was using. i think basic is a good thing. perhaps a bit sad that people today do not have instant access to it.

musicale 4y ago
Maybe programming is dead due to app stores on one hand and AI on the other, but I still wish that web browsers included an easy and visible onramp to the rather capable and powerful JavaScript language that is built into every one of them.

lockhouse 4y ago

There’s nothing inherently slow about Basic. There were several implementations of Basic compilers that were plenty fast enough. Sure, they weren’t as fast as C, C++, Pascal, and Fortran, but they were good enough to make commercial software with.

bhauer 4y ago
Exactly. For example, GFA Basic, mentioned in the article, was quite fast, especially when compiled.
musicale 4y ago
The first BASIC implementations were compiled. In fact, compilation to machine code was one of the 4 original requirements for the language when it was first developed as a language for the Dartmouth College time-sharing system (efficiency and performance being directly related to the number of users that the system could support.) Many early BASIC implementations for microcomputers (such as tiny BASIC) prioritized memory usage over speed, so they tended to favor interpreters. But as others have noted, numerous compiled BASIC implementations existed as well.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago

> It wasn't that easy to understand Out of all the complaints I've seen about BASIC/Visual Basic, this has never been one of them.

Mizoguchi 4y ago
Reading and debugging code filled with gotos can be a real nightmare.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  Later dialects of BASIC had code blocks and functions, making GOTO unnecessary. If you were using GOTO in your BASIC code in the 90s, you were doing it wrong.
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    OK, then what about "On Error Resume Next"? ;)
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      try / catch replaces that today
      - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
        try / catch is almost he opposite of On Error Resume Next OERN would make it so uncaught errors were silently ignored and execution would just continue on the next line as if nothing wrong happened. This would likely result in more errors, which would then also be ignored.
        ptx 4y ago
        Frustratingly, the "on error goto" mechanism in Visual Basic is basically try/catch, except that the error object doesn't give you any kind of stack trace (not even the procedure or line number where the error occurred) so you have to constantly catch and rethrow errors just to add context information.

musicale 4y ago

> It wasn't that easy to understand Yes it was. https://www.dartmouth.edu/basicfifty/basicmanual_1964.pdf https://www.dartmouth.edu/basicfifty/basicmanual_1964.pdf

czx4f4bd 4y ago
These vintage BASIC games' code looks clear as mud to me. http://www.vintage-basic.net/bcg/superstartrek.bas http://www.vintage-basic.net/bcg/superstartrek.bas https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=111 https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=1...
Kwpolska 4y ago
This is 1964’s BASIC, and it is quite basic (if you pardon the pun). It had no form of functions or procedures, not even the most elementary “GOTO and remember where you came from so you can return here later”. If you look at a more modern Basic implementation, they are more complex, and tend to have pointless complexities like differentiating Sub and Function procedures or two call syntaxes.
- musicale 4y ago
  That's kind of the point. BASIC was conceived as a simplified FORTRAN that beginners could learn in an afternoon but which was capable enough to enable them to write useful programs. 1964 BASIC did support single-line function definitions (see page 13.) Dartmouth BASIC kept evolving into the 1980s and seems to have turned into a pretty capable language that retained much of the accessibility of the original. I wonder what would have happened if True BASIC had been a free/open source project instead of proprietary software.
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    > 1964 BASIC did support single-line function definitions (see page 13.) Those are extremely basic functions that can only do a simple math operation on a single number. This is a function in the math sense, but not useful for programming.