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> No indication they even wanted homegrown BASIC type stuff. Further up this very thread is a link from a first party source that refutes that entirely.
by sbuk 3y ago
> No indication they even wanted homegrown BASIC type stuff.
Further up this very thread is a link from a first party source that refutes that entirely.
- flomo 3y agoNo, not at all, the folklore story doesn't even address Apple's strategy. Their developer relations were "Apply Here" back then. Macintosh shipped with zero developer tooling, not C/C++, not Pascal, not BASIC. And, we have no idea what Donn's BASIC was actually like ... it probably wasn't "Visual Basic", or even a platform. Just better than Microsoft's halfazz port of their micro basic. (which did have some quickdraw commands.)
- GeekyBear 3y ago> we have no idea what Donn's BASIC was actually like We literally know exactly what it was like. Dartmouth was already using a late beta of the software for a Basic class when Microsoft forced Apple to cancel the release of the final version.
- mainland 3y agoIf you'd like to see what Donn's BASIC was like, you can! The Internet Archive has a version that runs in-browser [1]. Although the Folklore article says there were two books describing Donn's BASIC, I believe there were at least three: Introduction to Macintosh BASIC, Using Macintosh BASIC, and The Macintosh BASIC Handbook. All three are available at vintageapple.org [2]. [1] https://archive.org/details/mac_MacBASIC.335 https://archive.org/details/mac_MacBASIC.335 [2] https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/ https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/
- flomo 3y agoThanks! I had no idea it was out there. (Although it looks like it's not very 'visual'.)