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BASIC was responsible for sparking the interest in computers for a generation. One of the most harmful falsehoods about it is that somehow GOTOs and line number

BASIC was responsible for sparking the interest in computers for a generation. One of the most harmful falsehoods about it is that somehow GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life. I think that even today there is nothing like BASIC to get kids interested in computers. But it's not a language just for kids. While most dialects are somewhat limiting, there is nonetheless a TON of real useful stuff you can do with it.

phkahler 3y ago
I learned Basic at 10, and I would argue that Python is a better choice today. But regardless of which one, the most important thing about basic was that for a while every computer came with some flavor of Basic. It's what got a generation hooked on tech. Why oh why doesn't Windows and macOS come with Python and Idle out of the box? Or does Mac, I forget.
- Cockbrand 3y ago
  The Mac does come with Python, but of course it’s easier to get started from zero when the first thing you see after switching on the computer is a BASIC prompt.
  - antod 3y ago
    Not just that, usually the computer came with a printed manual for BASIC too.
    - musicale 3y ago
      Having an onramp to programming is nice. I also imagine there was more of an incentive to write your own programs when there weren't a million games and other apps already available in app stores.
- leetrout 3y ago
  Mac like other bsd/linux includes a system python but not idle.
- radicalbyte 3y ago
  I also started with BASIC at 10 (C64 in 1990) and I'm going to teach my kids to code in Python. It's simple (low abstraction) and integrates well with other things (IoT) and they can use a REPL. It's disappointing that Windows doesn't release with an accessible interpreted language. They ship with a couple of games so why not drop some kind of super integrated and simple programming environment? Most of my generation cut their teeth on Microsoft Basic after all.
  - colonelpopcorn 3y ago
    I think most tech companies rely on ignorance to sell their "simple" solutions. If everyone could solve their own problems their own way, then nobody would buy "simple" solutions.
    - zaphar 3y ago
      Tech companies sell convenience. Most people don't want to to do the work required to "solve their own problems their own way". They aren't buying simple. They are buying: "It's Already Built".
  - krallja 3y ago
    `Win+X I` brings up a PowerShell window. It’s supremely integrated - it can do ANYTHING a compiled .NET language can do, including calling into unmanaged COM, etc.. And it’s super simple - you can get started with simple string processing and file manipulation in just a few characters. It’s just not popular in the same way BASIC was.
    - 7thaccount 3y ago
      Agree with everything you've said about Powershell. It's pretty cool. Buuut...the common Basic computers of the time had commands that let you do built-in graphics in a very simple manner. Not anything as crazy complex as the .NET charting and GUI stuff available to Powershell now. It's a real shame there isn't a built-in DSL that could allow normal users (i.e. not full time developers) to build some really simple games in like half a page of code.
- blowski 3y ago
  Apple encourages you to use Swift with Playgrounds on macOS and iPadOS.
- mavhc 3y ago
  BASIC is smarter than Python, don't need :, and it can work out the difference between = and == by itself
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  One of the advantages of a classic BASIC for a beginner was its very small feature set. It was easy even for a kid to get it all in his or her head. Python not so much, especially the idiomatic stuff. BASIC is very clear: 10 PRINT "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10 If you understand that the computer will execute lines in numerical order, it's very easy to understand that. The equivalent in Python of just that simple thing would not be so clear. It's great as an introductory language IMO. I disagree with Dijkstra that it will do any permanent damage -- if anything it will help the programmer appreciate the advantages of structured or object-oriented code when they are ready for it.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    Right? I was just about to say that Windows ships with power shell these days, but then immediately realized how poorly that maps. It used to ship with qbasic and a nice editor held over from dos. That was pretty good, though it was essentially hidden. It was there, but there was no icon for it and no docs or directions said to use it, let alone boot right to it as your primary interface. Basically the driving force behind the production of Windows is the parts of MS that make money from it, not the developers who would write stuff for other developers if they could. They want users that consume, not produce, and they absolutely do not want users who tinker and poke and modify. They offer development systems only because they still have to, and they make even those into managed inscrutable products you merely use like powerpoint as much as possible.
  - troupe 3y ago
    > I disagree with Dijkstra that it will do any permanent damage Dijkstra's quote about people who learned programming with BASIC being beyond repair is obviously hyperbole, but given the number of programmers he taught, I'd assume he was seeing some significant difference that was important enough to prompt his statement.
- tempodox 3y ago
  macOS-10.14 (Mojave) has python-2.7 + idle still bundled, but macOS-13 (Ventura) not any more. You'll have to install it via MacPorts, but at least you'll have a choice which version to install.
  - Cockbrand 3y ago
    My Mac with Sonoma aka macOS 14 has Python in /usr/bin/python3, so I assume it's been installed with the system. It might have been installed with Xcode, though.
    - jasomill 3y ago
      That's not Python; it's just a hard link to a generic shim for every program in /usr/bin that ships with the developer tools, $ find /usr/bin -inum $(stat -f %i /usr/bin/python3) | wc -l 76 $ cp /usr/bin/python3 /tmp/IEFBR14 $ /tmp/IEFBR14 IEFBR14: error: sh -c '⋯/Xcode.app/⋯/xcodebuild -sdk ⋯/Xcode.app/⋯/MacOSX.sdk -find IEFBR14 2> /dev/null' failed with exit code 17664: (null) (errno=No such file or directory) xcode-select: Failed to locate 'IEFBR14', requesting installation of command line developer tools. $ and then if you're in a GUI session it pops up a dialog box[1] offering to download and install the developer tools (even if they're already installed; the example above is from a Sonoma box with both Xcode 15.1 and the latest command line developer tools installed). [1] https://jasomill.at/IEFBR14.png https://jasomill.at/IEFBR14.png
      - Cockbrand 3y ago
        I do have Xcode installed, and for me it's just Python $ /usr/bin/python3 [ 12:18:42 ] Python 3.9.6 (default, Nov 10 2023, 13:38:27) [Clang 15.0.0 (clang-1500.1.0.2.5)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> So I guess it depends on whether Xcode and developer tools are installed or not. Too bad it's not installed by default any more anyway.
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  > Why oh why doesn't Windows and macOS come with Python and Idle out of the box? Because they have something better: a web browser with a javascript console.
  - phkahler 3y ago
    Even I don't know how to use that ;-)
gully_boy 3y ago
>>One of the most harmful falsehoods about it is that somehow GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life. i had nightmares about avoiding GOTOs in my teens...
phendrenad2 3y ago
> GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life Dijkstra will go down in history as one of the great algorithm designers, but this will always be a black mark on his legacy, possibly overshading his contributions. There's a lesson here about not pontificating outside of your field.
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  In his text he argued for higher level constructs, as they are established now. I think there he was right. Unrestricted goto often isn't good for complexer programs.
- skocznymroczny 3y ago
  My understanding is that when "GOTO consider harmful" came out, the typical code flow was to put values into global variables, goto to some piece of code then goto back and continue. Nowadays we have functions with arguments and you should just use that. But harmful goto was about the specific type of coding that happened at the time, but people assume it's any goto use in general.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    And notably the famously provocative title did not come from him. You could say "he never even said that".
- Someone 3y ago
  Dijkstra wrote that in 1968. At the time, quite a few languages didn’t support recursion (ten years later, FORTRAN 77 didn’t, officially), and lots of hardware didn’t have a call stack (a word that Dijkstra invented, and described in 1960. See https://ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/07_dijkstra.pdf https://ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/07_dijkstra...), so if they needed one, they’d have to write it in code. Using a language that supported structured programming would get rid of such scaffolding code that hid the logic of the actual program. Many languages also allowed code to jump out of and into loops, and programmers (ab)used that to cram their code into the small amounts of memory they had at their disposal. The resulting code could be quite hard to understand. > There's a lesson here about not pontificating outside of your field. How was that outside of his field, which was about thinking logically about programming?
euroderf 3y ago
> One of the most harmful falsehoods about it is that somehow GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life. Yup! As soon as I was exposed to a language withOUT line numbers and GOTOs, a little light went on, and stayed on.
zozbot234 3y ago
GOTO-based programming is just continuation passing style - the definition of GOTO is literally switching the continuation of the current statement to something else. (Which means that its preconditions are OR'd to the preconditions of its target statement, and its post-condition is not defined. A GOTO-based program becomes easier to analyze and understand if you add COME-FROM markings to every possible GOTO target.) Incidentally, one can understand self-modifying code in a similar way.
- ddingus 3y ago
  I second the request to expand. I do not understand your comment and I want to. Got a link we can use to get some insight maybe?
- rafavento 3y ago
  I find this intriguing. Would you mind to expand?
- goto11 3y ago
  GOTO does not pass a continuation though, so I can't see how it is similar to continuation-passing style. GOTO is just a jump like jumps in machine code. BASIC does not have notion of a continuation as a value.
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    Some BASICs such as BBC BASIC allowed GOTO to take a variable or expression directly, and many BASICs supported the ON..GOTO construct that allows for the same. And turning all control flow within a program into jump-like operations is arguably the main point of CPS.
    - goto11 3y ago
      But this is just computed gotos. There is no continuation passed. Arguably the main point of continuation-passing style is that you pass a continuation along with the jump. Hence the name.
queuebert 3y ago
> One of the most harmful falsehoods about it is that somehow GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life. In fact GOTOs in BASIC were, I think, a big part of lowering the barrier to programming for the new and the young. It relieves the mental load of structuring the program, allowing you to concentrate on the logic and syntax. Not using GOTOs requires already having a mental picture of what the program should look like before you write it, or at least rewriting it multiple times as you go. As a Rust programmer, I probably spent 5-10% of my time restructuring branches to deal with Results and Options more elegantly, and it is the least fun part. While not related to program flow, it's an example of a Good Thing that makes coding less fun.
- jermaustin1 3y ago
  For me BASIC led to VB which led to VB.Net which quickly led me to C#. I did some real fun stuff in BASIC as a kid that I never replicated in later languages. In kindergarten or first grade, I picked up a book called something like "Make Your Own Computer Games" at my local library. Everything was GOTOs and LABELS. The librarian didn't want to let me check it out because it was beyond my understanding, but my grandma insisted. That night and for the following 2 days, on my Dad's work computer, I would type and retype these computer games into GWBASIC in MSDOS, and then type run at the end. There was no way to actually save the .BAS files, so any time I wanted to play one of these games, I had to type it. So I memorized them before I had to turn the book back in. I then started to combine games together. Like "Guess the Number" and "Hangman" which actually taught me more about programming than anything I learned later in life from education.
- cookiengineer 3y ago
  For me, as a golang programmer, it's almost the same like you mentioned. Additional mental overhead in golang is that you also need to implement everything in as-flat-dependencies as possible due to the compiler not having support to resolve single methods or recursive dependencies (and -injections). Usually I find myself rewriting the codebase at least 3 times until I have a modular enough architecture that does not have any unresolvable recursive dependencies. Usually it ends up in a folder structure with a top level structs, utils, actions, cmds, schemas, parsers, protocols etc. While it also embraces strong knowledge about the architecture, it also is a much higher threshold until you have a program working. Add to this the always occurring defined but not used errors and you can demotivate kids real fast, even though the language syntax and grammar could be very easy to learn (apart from what pointers, slices and reflections or memory allocations and callstacks are).
dehrmann 3y ago
> GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer And yet no one said this about programming assembly.
- slim 3y ago
  because there's no alternative to assembly, whereas for higher order languages there is
- tenebrisalietum 3y ago
  line numbers don't exist in assembly?
  - yetanotherloss 3y ago
    Are memory locations or labels resolved to them, probably at compile or startup time, really any different? The whole GOTO-harmful is a product of a bygone time much as anyone needing to keep track of a jump table by hand is now.
    - dehrmann 3y ago
      I think the real GOTO-harmful lesson is that for any non-trivial program, you'll end up implementing conditional blocks, loops, and functions by hand. There just aren't other abstractions on top of a von Veumann architecture, and GOTO arbitrary line rarely does anything other than those three cases, and when it does, it's exceedingly hard to get right. Like sure, true spaghetti code is bad, but it's also really hard to write.
gregmac 3y ago
> somehow GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life I think the opposite. It's super simple to understand as a beginner and is a low barrier to entry. The key is likely aligning when to introduce someone to a more structured language with when the are hitting the limits of GOTO - like just have finished writing an awkward large program that could be significantly simpler, spent hours debugging a problem caused by lack of scoped variables, or are trying to modify something they wrote a few months ago that has dozens of GOTOs. These are the things where ideally the light goes on and people "get it". On the last point, I think that is really what makes people great. Go back and try to work on code you haven't looked at it even thought about in 6+ months. If you've only been coding a couple years, you'll gain a ton of insights into what (not) to do to write maintainable software, in the same way students learn why we don't use GOTO.
- BariumBlue 3y ago
  Good point actually - when teaching absolute newbs, I found they'd often confuse the point of a while with a for with an if block. GOTO is super unambiguous and probably a better introduction to program control flow while they get used to manipulating and juggling variables around
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    I would suggest that Rust's only actual loop, (using the keyword loop) is unambiguous while also being structured. You can (and during development I sometimes do) just write loop until it's apparent what you actually meant and then rewrite - also the Clippy linter will point out various obvious idioms e.g. for or while let loops if they are written as legal but unidiomatic loop constructs. So that aids pedagogy. Your loop works, but the linter explains how an experienced programmer would express the same loop more clearly. Computed GOTO is often possible in BASICs. In one sense that's awesome, this is a very powerful technique, but in practice it's so unstructured that you shouldn't ever use it so why even offer it? "That's how the machine works". Yes it is, which is why we don't write raw machine code when we can.
    - 3y ago
ezy 3y ago
The funny part, and perhaps the part that really damns the critics, is that (IF..GOTO,) GOTOs and line numbers are useful baseline concepts because they have a direct correspondence to what a computer actually does. People who went from BASIC to assembly language did not experience much cognitive dissonance compared to your average JS programmer. And decades later, computers still work roughly this way under the covers complete with (tests,) jumps and memory addresses. :-)
- mrandish 3y ago
  That's an interesting observation that's never occurred to me. As a teen I got a 4k 8-bit home computer in 1981, connected it to the family TV and taught myself BASIC programming from the manuals that came with it and by typing in simple game program listings from hobbyist magazines. As I got the hang of it I started customizing, expanding and combining different games just as you did. When I got tired of BASIC and wanted to do more, the only option was this thing called assembly language. The three letter mnemonics were kind of cryptic at first but I somehow got the idea of calling up Motorola and some kind sales rep took pity on me and sent me the reference book for the 6809 CPU. The book was too advanced for me but fortunately, it came with folding quick reference card with a simple chart showing the registers, a listing of all the mnemonics and a sentence or two about each one. That card was my constant companion as I taught myself assembler by writing simple programs that would put graphics on the screen. Just as you said, I never really had any conceptual problem with ideas like holding a numeric value in a register, an index pointer storing the address of a string or array in memory or conditionally branching. All of these had fairly direct analogs in BASIC like LET, IF, GOTO, GOSUB, ARRAY, PEEK and POKE. Even primordial 8-bit ROM based BASIC wasn't that awful. The biggest challenges were the lack of editing tools, being locked into line numbers and the cryptic two-letter error codes. I think a modern BASIC dialect with full-screen editing (no line numbers), named function calling with parameter passing and a decent debugger would still provide a reasonable introduction to computer programming. This was enough to launch me on a successful lifelong career in high tech as a programmer, product manager, entrepreneur and eventually senior executive. Every bit of it self-taught with no formal computer education at all.
  - 3y ago
pge 3y ago
Definitely not just a language for kids - When I worked for the Navy in the early 90s, they were still using software written in Rocky Mountain BASIC on all the submarines in the fleet.
- ikari_pl 3y ago
  That's mindblowing! I'd expect Ada there! Do you have any references that I should add to the post? :D
  - pge 3y ago
    Edited: Here’s link to an article that includes a first person account of why RM BASIC (developed by HP) was used by the fleet. http://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=367 http://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=367
Gibbon1 3y ago
Rocky Mountain basic had exceptionally nice string handing, array handling and could do matrix math. I think traditional CS hates BASIC because it's hard to get people to look at it in terms of pure math. And it enables muggles to create useful programs.
- yetanotherloss 3y ago
  I look at it more like Excel now. It gives you just enough to do simple things easily with tools that make more complicated things ... Horrifying. Seeing deeply nested excel IFs that parsed out individual letters of a string for recursive cell logic still gives me nightmares.
DonHopkins 3y ago
Speaking of line numbers, does anyone know why DECSYSTEM 10's and DECSYSTEM 20's BASIC had a "LISTREVERSE" command? Yes, it actually did exactly what it sounds like! Chalk one up for DEC and BASIC. What other programming languages support that feature, huh? Now all you need is a COMEFROM and COMESUB and RUNREVERSE (or NUR) statements, and you can write reversible BASIC programs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World https://web.archive.org/web/20210713130832/https://imgur.com/a/Bt40M https://web.archive.org/web/20210713130832/https://imgur.com... DECSYSTEM 20 BASIC User's Guide: LISTREVERSE command LISTREVERSE LISTNHREVERSE LISTREVERSE and LISTNHREVERSE print the contents of the user's memory area in order of descending line numbers. LISTREVERSE precedes the output with a heading, LISTNHREVERSE eliminates the heading. LISTREVERSE EQUIV 10:53 13-NOV-75 40 END 35 PRINT "THE EQUIVALENT CURRENT IS",I, " AMPERES" 25 I=E1/R 10 INPUT R 5 INPUT E1 READY http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-10-XBRCA-A-D%20DECsystem10%20Basic%20Language%20Reference%20Card%20(Version%2017B).pdf http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-1... http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-20-LBMAA-A-D%20BASIC%20User's%20Guide.pdf http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-2...
fortran77 3y ago
I see many Ph.Ds programming in Matlab as if it were BASIC -- no functions, everything global, etc, and they get a lot of stuff done!
bena 3y ago
It's not a falsehood. It allows for a lot of bad stuff. Like the following function Thing1() begin do important things if condition goto thisIsBad end if do more important things end function Thing2() begin do different things label: thisIsBad perform actions end And people would do the equivalent of that. You'd run across uninitialized variables, variables accessed outside of scope. Yes, there are disciplined ways to use GOTOs. And most control flow can be implemented with conditionals and jumps, but most people are not disciplined.
- ikari_pl 3y ago
  > most people are not disciplined Abstracting from programming languages alone, this is the reason why good software design makes doing the wrong thing either impossible, or at least very hard, while making the right use very easy. I am still learning to do that better. Sometimes I am able to foresee the misuse of a feature and make it impossible, but not always - and it's harder to correct the error once it proliferates. However, the article puts the quote (though it had nothing to do with GOTO) in context - and at the time no dialect of BASIC that was used by millions of users had support for functions (other than mathematical expressions declared with DEF FN), or procedures - so you couldn't jump out of scope... because there was only one scope.
ddingus 3y ago
I agree, and frankly having gone from BASIC to 6502 assembly language, GOTO made perfect sense. What I like most, and still enjoy today when possible, is how open the hardware is! For someone wanting to know how computers work, it is damn tough to beat what many of us got as kids; namely, a respectable computer, schematics to understand the hardware, and BASIC right there, ready to go. My first disassembler was written in BASIC. So was my assembler, and it was a line oriented one modeled closely after the one built into the Apple 8 bit computers. And look at the BBC Micro! That BASIC was great and offered in-line assembly code! Excellent! These days, I find microcontroller can offer something similar. If I ever find time, the Parallax Propeller 2 could make a fantastic computer. It can run cores concurrently, or parallel, or even doing different things entirely. Jim Bagley and friends setup a NAMCO emulator and found they could host 8 simultaneous sessions of Space Invaders, complete with player controls and displays! Put a BASIC on that, and a reasonable macro assembler and the result would be a killer learning system able to drive lots of hardware and use any display one can find from old TV's to HDMI panels and everything in-between.
ikari_pl 3y ago
I took the liberty of quoting the first sentence of your comment as the first sentence of the article intro. I couldn't agree more with you :) It's all about picking the right tool for the job, and the language itself, as it evolved, picked the concepts it could use from everything else - like other languages do as well. I hope I didn't convey a message of BASIC being for kids - it just happens that many people that start their adventure with programming (especially in the 80s and 90s, but often also today) look for a simple language to learn the core concepts of how a computer operates internally. It's also a little like with Python - you can create a complex and deeply structured application with it, but it's also a language great for simple scripts that will look much more like the BASIC programs - glueing together a bunch of statements to get to the result ASAP. And this is extremely useful. It seems like the same characteristics that made BASIC so good to start coding are also the ones that get the most criticism, which is a fascinating paradox.

phkahler 3y ago

I learned Basic at 10, and I would argue that Python is a better choice today. But regardless of which one, the most important thing about basic was that for a while every computer came with some flavor of Basic. It's what got a generation hooked on tech. Why oh why doesn't Windows and macOS come with Python and Idle out of the box? Or does Mac, I forget.

Cockbrand 3y ago
The Mac does come with Python, but of course it’s easier to get started from zero when the first thing you see after switching on the computer is a BASIC prompt.
- antod 3y ago
  Not just that, usually the computer came with a printed manual for BASIC too.
  - musicale 3y ago
    Having an onramp to programming is nice. I also imagine there was more of an incentive to write your own programs when there weren't a million games and other apps already available in app stores.
leetrout 3y ago
Mac like other bsd/linux includes a system python but not idle.
radicalbyte 3y ago
I also started with BASIC at 10 (C64 in 1990) and I'm going to teach my kids to code in Python. It's simple (low abstraction) and integrates well with other things (IoT) and they can use a REPL. It's disappointing that Windows doesn't release with an accessible interpreted language. They ship with a couple of games so why not drop some kind of super integrated and simple programming environment? Most of my generation cut their teeth on Microsoft Basic after all.
- colonelpopcorn 3y ago
  I think most tech companies rely on ignorance to sell their "simple" solutions. If everyone could solve their own problems their own way, then nobody would buy "simple" solutions.
  - zaphar 3y ago
    Tech companies sell convenience. Most people don't want to to do the work required to "solve their own problems their own way". They aren't buying simple. They are buying: "It's Already Built".
- krallja 3y ago
  `Win+X I` brings up a PowerShell window. It’s supremely integrated - it can do ANYTHING a compiled .NET language can do, including calling into unmanaged COM, etc.. And it’s super simple - you can get started with simple string processing and file manipulation in just a few characters. It’s just not popular in the same way BASIC was.
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    Agree with everything you've said about Powershell. It's pretty cool. Buuut...the common Basic computers of the time had commands that let you do built-in graphics in a very simple manner. Not anything as crazy complex as the .NET charting and GUI stuff available to Powershell now. It's a real shame there isn't a built-in DSL that could allow normal users (i.e. not full time developers) to build some really simple games in like half a page of code.
blowski 3y ago
Apple encourages you to use Swift with Playgrounds on macOS and iPadOS.
mavhc 3y ago
BASIC is smarter than Python, don't need :, and it can work out the difference between = and == by itself
SoftTalker 3y ago
One of the advantages of a classic BASIC for a beginner was its very small feature set. It was easy even for a kid to get it all in his or her head. Python not so much, especially the idiomatic stuff. BASIC is very clear: 10 PRINT "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10 If you understand that the computer will execute lines in numerical order, it's very easy to understand that. The equivalent in Python of just that simple thing would not be so clear. It's great as an introductory language IMO. I disagree with Dijkstra that it will do any permanent damage -- if anything it will help the programmer appreciate the advantages of structured or object-oriented code when they are ready for it.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Right? I was just about to say that Windows ships with power shell these days, but then immediately realized how poorly that maps. It used to ship with qbasic and a nice editor held over from dos. That was pretty good, though it was essentially hidden. It was there, but there was no icon for it and no docs or directions said to use it, let alone boot right to it as your primary interface. Basically the driving force behind the production of Windows is the parts of MS that make money from it, not the developers who would write stuff for other developers if they could. They want users that consume, not produce, and they absolutely do not want users who tinker and poke and modify. They offer development systems only because they still have to, and they make even those into managed inscrutable products you merely use like powerpoint as much as possible.
- troupe 3y ago
  > I disagree with Dijkstra that it will do any permanent damage Dijkstra's quote about people who learned programming with BASIC being beyond repair is obviously hyperbole, but given the number of programmers he taught, I'd assume he was seeing some significant difference that was important enough to prompt his statement.
tempodox 3y ago
macOS-10.14 (Mojave) has python-2.7 + idle still bundled, but macOS-13 (Ventura) not any more. You'll have to install it via MacPorts, but at least you'll have a choice which version to install.
- Cockbrand 3y ago
  My Mac with Sonoma aka macOS 14 has Python in /usr/bin/python3, so I assume it's been installed with the system. It might have been installed with Xcode, though.
  - jasomill 3y ago
    That's not Python; it's just a hard link to a generic shim for every program in /usr/bin that ships with the developer tools, $ find /usr/bin -inum $(stat -f %i /usr/bin/python3) | wc -l 76 $ cp /usr/bin/python3 /tmp/IEFBR14 $ /tmp/IEFBR14 IEFBR14: error: sh -c '⋯/Xcode.app/⋯/xcodebuild -sdk ⋯/Xcode.app/⋯/MacOSX.sdk -find IEFBR14 2> /dev/null' failed with exit code 17664: (null) (errno=No such file or directory) xcode-select: Failed to locate 'IEFBR14', requesting installation of command line developer tools. $ and then if you're in a GUI session it pops up a dialog box[1] offering to download and install the developer tools (even if they're already installed; the example above is from a Sonoma box with both Xcode 15.1 and the latest command line developer tools installed). [1] https://jasomill.at/IEFBR14.png https://jasomill.at/IEFBR14.png
    - Cockbrand 3y ago
      I do have Xcode installed, and for me it's just Python $ /usr/bin/python3 [ 12:18:42 ] Python 3.9.6 (default, Nov 10 2023, 13:38:27) [Clang 15.0.0 (clang-1500.1.0.2.5)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> So I guess it depends on whether Xcode and developer tools are installed or not. Too bad it's not installed by default any more anyway.
bigbillheck 3y ago
> Why oh why doesn't Windows and macOS come with Python and Idle out of the box? Because they have something better: a web browser with a javascript console.
- phkahler 3y ago
  Even I don't know how to use that ;-)

gully_boy 3y ago

>>One of the most harmful falsehoods about it is that somehow GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life. i had nightmares about avoiding GOTOs in my teens...

phendrenad2 3y ago

> GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life Dijkstra will go down in history as one of the great algorithm designers, but this will always be a black mark on his legacy, possibly overshading his contributions. There's a lesson here about not pontificating outside of your field.

johannes1234321 3y ago
In his text he argued for higher level constructs, as they are established now. I think there he was right. Unrestricted goto often isn't good for complexer programs.
skocznymroczny 3y ago
My understanding is that when "GOTO consider harmful" came out, the typical code flow was to put values into global variables, goto to some piece of code then goto back and continue. Nowadays we have functions with arguments and you should just use that. But harmful goto was about the specific type of coding that happened at the time, but people assume it's any goto use in general.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  And notably the famously provocative title did not come from him. You could say "he never even said that".
Someone 3y ago
Dijkstra wrote that in 1968. At the time, quite a few languages didn’t support recursion (ten years later, FORTRAN 77 didn’t, officially), and lots of hardware didn’t have a call stack (a word that Dijkstra invented, and described in 1960. See https://ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/07_dijkstra.pdf https://ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/07_dijkstra...), so if they needed one, they’d have to write it in code. Using a language that supported structured programming would get rid of such scaffolding code that hid the logic of the actual program. Many languages also allowed code to jump out of and into loops, and programmers (ab)used that to cram their code into the small amounts of memory they had at their disposal. The resulting code could be quite hard to understand. > There's a lesson here about not pontificating outside of your field. How was that outside of his field, which was about thinking logically about programming?

euroderf 3y ago

> One of the most harmful falsehoods about it is that somehow GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life. Yup! As soon as I was exposed to a language withOUT line numbers and GOTOs, a little light went on, and stayed on.

zozbot234 3y ago

GOTO-based programming is just continuation passing style - the definition of GOTO is literally switching the continuation of the current statement to something else. (Which means that its preconditions are OR'd to the preconditions of its target statement, and its post-condition is not defined. A GOTO-based program becomes easier to analyze and understand if you add COME-FROM markings to every possible GOTO target.) Incidentally, one can understand self-modifying code in a similar way.

ddingus 3y ago
I second the request to expand. I do not understand your comment and I want to. Got a link we can use to get some insight maybe?
rafavento 3y ago
I find this intriguing. Would you mind to expand?
goto11 3y ago
GOTO does not pass a continuation though, so I can't see how it is similar to continuation-passing style. GOTO is just a jump like jumps in machine code. BASIC does not have notion of a continuation as a value.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  Some BASICs such as BBC BASIC allowed GOTO to take a variable or expression directly, and many BASICs supported the ON..GOTO construct that allows for the same. And turning all control flow within a program into jump-like operations is arguably the main point of CPS.
  - goto11 3y ago
    But this is just computed gotos. There is no continuation passed. Arguably the main point of continuation-passing style is that you pass a continuation along with the jump. Hence the name.

queuebert 3y ago

> One of the most harmful falsehoods about it is that somehow GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life. In fact GOTOs in BASIC were, I think, a big part of lowering the barrier to programming for the new and the young. It relieves the mental load of structuring the program, allowing you to concentrate on the logic and syntax. Not using GOTOs requires already having a mental picture of what the program should look like before you write it, or at least rewriting it multiple times as you go. As a Rust programmer, I probably spent 5-10% of my time restructuring branches to deal with Results and Options more elegantly, and it is the least fun part. While not related to program flow, it's an example of a Good Thing that makes coding less fun.

jermaustin1 3y ago
For me BASIC led to VB which led to VB.Net which quickly led me to C#. I did some real fun stuff in BASIC as a kid that I never replicated in later languages. In kindergarten or first grade, I picked up a book called something like "Make Your Own Computer Games" at my local library. Everything was GOTOs and LABELS. The librarian didn't want to let me check it out because it was beyond my understanding, but my grandma insisted. That night and for the following 2 days, on my Dad's work computer, I would type and retype these computer games into GWBASIC in MSDOS, and then type run at the end. There was no way to actually save the .BAS files, so any time I wanted to play one of these games, I had to type it. So I memorized them before I had to turn the book back in. I then started to combine games together. Like "Guess the Number" and "Hangman" which actually taught me more about programming than anything I learned later in life from education.
cookiengineer 3y ago
For me, as a golang programmer, it's almost the same like you mentioned. Additional mental overhead in golang is that you also need to implement everything in as-flat-dependencies as possible due to the compiler not having support to resolve single methods or recursive dependencies (and -injections). Usually I find myself rewriting the codebase at least 3 times until I have a modular enough architecture that does not have any unresolvable recursive dependencies. Usually it ends up in a folder structure with a top level structs, utils, actions, cmds, schemas, parsers, protocols etc. While it also embraces strong knowledge about the architecture, it also is a much higher threshold until you have a program working. Add to this the always occurring defined but not used errors and you can demotivate kids real fast, even though the language syntax and grammar could be very easy to learn (apart from what pointers, slices and reflections or memory allocations and callstacks are).

dehrmann 3y ago

> GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer And yet no one said this about programming assembly.

slim 3y ago
because there's no alternative to assembly, whereas for higher order languages there is
tenebrisalietum 3y ago
line numbers don't exist in assembly?
- yetanotherloss 3y ago
  Are memory locations or labels resolved to them, probably at compile or startup time, really any different? The whole GOTO-harmful is a product of a bygone time much as anyone needing to keep track of a jump table by hand is now.
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    I think the real GOTO-harmful lesson is that for any non-trivial program, you'll end up implementing conditional blocks, loops, and functions by hand. There just aren't other abstractions on top of a von Veumann architecture, and GOTO arbitrary line rarely does anything other than those three cases, and when it does, it's exceedingly hard to get right. Like sure, true spaghetti code is bad, but it's also really hard to write.

gregmac 3y ago

> somehow GOTOs and line numbers would turn you into a bad programmer for life I think the opposite. It's super simple to understand as a beginner and is a low barrier to entry. The key is likely aligning when to introduce someone to a more structured language with when the are hitting the limits of GOTO - like just have finished writing an awkward large program that could be significantly simpler, spent hours debugging a problem caused by lack of scoped variables, or are trying to modify something they wrote a few months ago that has dozens of GOTOs. These are the things where ideally the light goes on and people "get it". On the last point, I think that is really what makes people great. Go back and try to work on code you haven't looked at it even thought about in 6+ months. If you've only been coding a couple years, you'll gain a ton of insights into what (not) to do to write maintainable software, in the same way students learn why we don't use GOTO.

BariumBlue 3y ago
Good point actually - when teaching absolute newbs, I found they'd often confuse the point of a while with a for with an if block. GOTO is super unambiguous and probably a better introduction to program control flow while they get used to manipulating and juggling variables around
- tialaramex 3y ago
  I would suggest that Rust's only actual loop, (using the keyword loop) is unambiguous while also being structured. You can (and during development I sometimes do) just write loop until it's apparent what you actually meant and then rewrite - also the Clippy linter will point out various obvious idioms e.g. for or while let loops if they are written as legal but unidiomatic loop constructs. So that aids pedagogy. Your loop works, but the linter explains how an experienced programmer would express the same loop more clearly. Computed GOTO is often possible in BASICs. In one sense that's awesome, this is a very powerful technique, but in practice it's so unstructured that you shouldn't ever use it so why even offer it? "That's how the machine works". Yes it is, which is why we don't write raw machine code when we can.
  - 3y ago

ezy 3y ago

The funny part, and perhaps the part that really damns the critics, is that (IF..GOTO,) GOTOs and line numbers are useful baseline concepts because they have a direct correspondence to what a computer actually does. People who went from BASIC to assembly language did not experience much cognitive dissonance compared to your average JS programmer. And decades later, computers still work roughly this way under the covers complete with (tests,) jumps and memory addresses. :-)

mrandish 3y ago
That's an interesting observation that's never occurred to me. As a teen I got a 4k 8-bit home computer in 1981, connected it to the family TV and taught myself BASIC programming from the manuals that came with it and by typing in simple game program listings from hobbyist magazines. As I got the hang of it I started customizing, expanding and combining different games just as you did. When I got tired of BASIC and wanted to do more, the only option was this thing called assembly language. The three letter mnemonics were kind of cryptic at first but I somehow got the idea of calling up Motorola and some kind sales rep took pity on me and sent me the reference book for the 6809 CPU. The book was too advanced for me but fortunately, it came with folding quick reference card with a simple chart showing the registers, a listing of all the mnemonics and a sentence or two about each one. That card was my constant companion as I taught myself assembler by writing simple programs that would put graphics on the screen. Just as you said, I never really had any conceptual problem with ideas like holding a numeric value in a register, an index pointer storing the address of a string or array in memory or conditionally branching. All of these had fairly direct analogs in BASIC like LET, IF, GOTO, GOSUB, ARRAY, PEEK and POKE. Even primordial 8-bit ROM based BASIC wasn't that awful. The biggest challenges were the lack of editing tools, being locked into line numbers and the cryptic two-letter error codes. I think a modern BASIC dialect with full-screen editing (no line numbers), named function calling with parameter passing and a decent debugger would still provide a reasonable introduction to computer programming. This was enough to launch me on a successful lifelong career in high tech as a programmer, product manager, entrepreneur and eventually senior executive. Every bit of it self-taught with no formal computer education at all.
- 3y ago

pge 3y ago

Definitely not just a language for kids - When I worked for the Navy in the early 90s, they were still using software written in Rocky Mountain BASIC on all the submarines in the fleet.

ikari_pl 3y ago
That's mindblowing! I'd expect Ada there! Do you have any references that I should add to the post? :D
- pge 3y ago
  Edited: Here’s link to an article that includes a first person account of why RM BASIC (developed by HP) was used by the fleet. http://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=367 http://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=367

Gibbon1 3y ago

Rocky Mountain basic had exceptionally nice string handing, array handling and could do matrix math. I think traditional CS hates BASIC because it's hard to get people to look at it in terms of pure math. And it enables muggles to create useful programs.

yetanotherloss 3y ago
I look at it more like Excel now. It gives you just enough to do simple things easily with tools that make more complicated things ... Horrifying. Seeing deeply nested excel IFs that parsed out individual letters of a string for recursive cell logic still gives me nightmares.

DonHopkins 3y ago

Speaking of line numbers, does anyone know why DECSYSTEM 10's and DECSYSTEM 20's BASIC had a "LISTREVERSE" command? Yes, it actually did exactly what it sounds like! Chalk one up for DEC and BASIC. What other programming languages support that feature, huh? Now all you need is a COMEFROM and COMESUB and RUNREVERSE (or NUR) statements, and you can write reversible BASIC programs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World https://web.archive.org/web/20210713130832/https://imgur.com/a/Bt40M https://web.archive.org/web/20210713130832/https://imgur.com... DECSYSTEM 20 BASIC User's Guide: LISTREVERSE command LISTREVERSE LISTNHREVERSE LISTREVERSE and LISTNHREVERSE print the contents of the user's memory area in order of descending line numbers. LISTREVERSE precedes the output with a heading, LISTNHREVERSE eliminates the heading. LISTREVERSE EQUIV 10:53 13-NOV-75 40 END 35 PRINT "THE EQUIVALENT CURRENT IS",I, " AMPERES" 25 I=E1/R 10 INPUT R 5 INPUT E1 READY http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-10-XBRCA-A-D%20DECsystem10%20Basic%20Language%20Reference%20Card%20(Version%2017B).pdf http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-1... http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-20-LBMAA-A-D%20BASIC%20User's%20Guide.pdf http://bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DEC-2...

fortran77 3y ago

I see many Ph.Ds programming in Matlab as if it were BASIC -- no functions, everything global, etc, and they get a lot of stuff done!

bena 3y ago

It's not a falsehood. It allows for a lot of bad stuff. Like the following function Thing1() begin do important things if condition goto thisIsBad end if do more important things end function Thing2() begin do different things label: thisIsBad perform actions end And people would do the equivalent of that. You'd run across uninitialized variables, variables accessed outside of scope. Yes, there are disciplined ways to use GOTOs. And most control flow can be implemented with conditionals and jumps, but most people are not disciplined.

ikari_pl 3y ago
> most people are not disciplined Abstracting from programming languages alone, this is the reason why good software design makes doing the wrong thing either impossible, or at least very hard, while making the right use very easy. I am still learning to do that better. Sometimes I am able to foresee the misuse of a feature and make it impossible, but not always - and it's harder to correct the error once it proliferates. However, the article puts the quote (though it had nothing to do with GOTO) in context - and at the time no dialect of BASIC that was used by millions of users had support for functions (other than mathematical expressions declared with DEF FN), or procedures - so you couldn't jump out of scope... because there was only one scope.

ddingus 3y ago

I agree, and frankly having gone from BASIC to 6502 assembly language, GOTO made perfect sense. What I like most, and still enjoy today when possible, is how open the hardware is! For someone wanting to know how computers work, it is damn tough to beat what many of us got as kids; namely, a respectable computer, schematics to understand the hardware, and BASIC right there, ready to go. My first disassembler was written in BASIC. So was my assembler, and it was a line oriented one modeled closely after the one built into the Apple 8 bit computers. And look at the BBC Micro! That BASIC was great and offered in-line assembly code! Excellent! These days, I find microcontroller can offer something similar. If I ever find time, the Parallax Propeller 2 could make a fantastic computer. It can run cores concurrently, or parallel, or even doing different things entirely. Jim Bagley and friends setup a NAMCO emulator and found they could host 8 simultaneous sessions of Space Invaders, complete with player controls and displays! Put a BASIC on that, and a reasonable macro assembler and the result would be a killer learning system able to drive lots of hardware and use any display one can find from old TV's to HDMI panels and everything in-between.

ikari_pl 3y ago

I took the liberty of quoting the first sentence of your comment as the first sentence of the article intro. I couldn't agree more with you :) It's all about picking the right tool for the job, and the language itself, as it evolved, picked the concepts it could use from everything else - like other languages do as well. I hope I didn't convey a message of BASIC being for kids - it just happens that many people that start their adventure with programming (especially in the 80s and 90s, but often also today) look for a simple language to learn the core concepts of how a computer operates internally. It's also a little like with Python - you can create a complex and deeply structured application with it, but it's also a language great for simple scripts that will look much more like the BASIC programs - glueing together a bunch of statements to get to the result ASAP. And this is extremely useful. It seems like the same characteristics that made BASIC so good to start coding are also the ones that get the most criticism, which is a fascinating paradox.