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> I think the core concepts of BASIC have been overlooked and then forgotten in the shift to Unix and Unix-like systems. Unix and BASIC are strictly orthogonal

> I think the core concepts of BASIC have been overlooked and then forgotten in the shift to Unix and Unix-like systems. Unix and BASIC are strictly orthogonal concepts/products. -hp- sold happily BASIC with their Unix workstations (that combination, at one time, was popular for automating test&measurement gear). Nothing stops you from linking a BASIC interpreter to /sbin/init .

lproven 3y ago
Sure they are, but the real point here is not whether A can run B or B run well under A. It is about philosophies. UNIX is not a codebase any more. Novell bought the Unix code and the Unix trademark from AT&T in 1993. It gave the trademark to the Open Group and since then "Unix" means "an OS that is compatible with Open Group testing". Unix is a way to design and use an OS. A big part of that is the conceptual model: plain text files, which can be sent to programs as input, and programs' output can be captured as text and kept or sent on to other programs. BASIC, as it developed and went very widespread in the late 1970s and early 1980s (and then faded away again) has a different model of its own. That model is that the computer boots into a BASIC interpreter, and what you type is direct input to that interpreter. Some implementations (notably the very widespread Microsoft/Commodore model) let you edit it on screen and when you hit Return that was sent to the interpreter too. There is no separate editor. The entire UI is the editor. You can't enter the editor because you can't leave the editor; there is no other UI. There's no "shell." As such there needed to be an auxiliary model for saving code for later, for building up a program in memory as you write it. That model is: enter a line number at the beginning, and it's not executed now, it's stored for later. In most implementations there's some command from bringing back a numbered line to change it. Just entering the bare line number deletes that line. It is its own UI model, and while I am not arguing that it is a better model or a worse model or comparing the virtues of the models, I'm just saying that it is a UI model and that it is a different UI model to the Unix UI model.

lproven 3y ago

Sure they are, but the real point here is not whether A can run B or B run well under A. It is about philosophies. UNIX is not a codebase any more. Novell bought the Unix code and the Unix trademark from AT&T in 1993. It gave the trademark to the Open Group and since then "Unix" means "an OS that is compatible with Open Group testing". Unix is a way to design and use an OS. A big part of that is the conceptual model: plain text files, which can be sent to programs as input, and programs' output can be captured as text and kept or sent on to other programs. BASIC, as it developed and went very widespread in the late 1970s and early 1980s (and then faded away again) has a different model of its own. That model is that the computer boots into a BASIC interpreter, and what you type is direct input to that interpreter. Some implementations (notably the very widespread Microsoft/Commodore model) let you edit it on screen and when you hit Return that was sent to the interpreter too. There is no separate editor. The entire UI is the editor. You can't enter the editor because you can't leave the editor; there is no other UI. There's no "shell." As such there needed to be an auxiliary model for saving code for later, for building up a program in memory as you write it. That model is: enter a line number at the beginning, and it's not executed now, it's stored for later. In most implementations there's some command from bringing back a numbered line to change it. Just entering the bare line number deletes that line. It is its own UI model, and while I am not arguing that it is a better model or a worse model or comparing the virtues of the models, I'm just saying that it is a UI model and that it is a different UI model to the Unix UI model.