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I got to re-appreciate BASIC when evaluating options for teaching 11-year-old kids a bit how to program (in a single session). People recommended Scratch etc.

by jll29 2y ago

I got to re-appreciate BASIC when evaluating options for teaching 11-year-old kids a bit how to program (in a single session). People recommended Scratch etc. but I felt talking about programs was important also, which is easier when you write textual statements. At some point, I briefly considered using an emulated BASIC due to the simplicity and built in graphic, but I ended up using Python together with the pyturtle library for LOGO-like graphics, because the main exercise was to let kids draw a house on paper and then ask them to generate the drawing commands (also first on paper). Using Python has the advantage that nothing they learned was "wasted" or "academic use only" - you can immediately build on or monetize Python knowledge. Interpreted BASIC certainly is a development forward from compiled FORTRAN from a didactic point of view.

bitwize 2y ago
Python is indeed the BASIC of today. I stoked my nephew's interest in programming by doing exactly what you said -- using Python with the pyturtle library. One flourish I'm particularly fond of is, we worked through the commands to draw a repeated object in the picture he was designing, and I said: "Now here's something programmers do, it's called refactoring. We're going to take this wheel here and make a function called 'wheel' that draws a wheel wherever you say. And then we're going to take the location and turn it into parameters for the 'wheel' function..." And on and on. He seemed really engaged. The ubiquity of microcomputer BASIC in the 80s -- often as the first thing users see, or the only thing they see absent a cartridge or disk or something loaded into the machine to run something else -- seemed to suggest that computers are meant to be programmed, the way pens are meant to be written with. It was a complete accident, of course, a side effect of market realities at the time: no one at the computer companies could think of what someone would want a microcomputer for, aside from video games. The devices were solutions still in search of problems. So the microcomputer manufacturers encouraged customers to invent their own uses and bundled a programming language that would let them do that. Once word processing, spreadsheets, and especially the internet took root, it became obvious what consumers would want a computer for, so the idea that they would be expected to program them fell by the wayside and programming tools became no longer easily accessible or even available except as a separate purchase. As a consequence we may not see the efflorescence of programmers among Xers to early millennials repeat itself the same way again. I don't even think it happened in the USA to the same degree that it did in the UK, thanks to Sir Clive Sinclair's ability to deliver cheap but serviceable and completely hackable units to even modest British homes; as a result, British computing, like British pop in the 80s, hit way different and became a source of endless fascination and influence.
- musicale 2y ago
  > The ubiquity of microcomputer BASIC in the 80s -- often as the first thing users see, or the only thing they see absent a cartridge or disk or something loaded into the machine to run something else -- seemed to suggest that computers are meant to be programmed, the way pens are meant to be written with. It was a complete accident, of course I don't think it was an accident. BASIC was designed to be a simple language that was efficient with limited hardware resources, easy for beginners to learn and use, and powerful enough to do useful things. It turned out to be a perfect fit for microcomputers for those reasons. Especially in an era before platform standardization and giant software ecosystems, end-user programming was assumed and intended. (Even more so with "educational" microcomputers like the BBC Micro.) > no one at the computer companies could think of what someone would want a microcomputer for, aside from video games On mobile (and probably PC as well), games still dominate app sales by a large margin. But in the early 1980s, microcomputer "business" (now "office" and "enterprise") software was already well established, including word processors (wordstar), spreadsheets (visicalc), databases (dbase) and software for mailing lists, billing, payroll, etc.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    A big difference between how BASIC was designed, and how many got introduced to it on 8 bit platforms, is that Dartmouth BASIC is compiled, not interpreted. It uses a approach similar to Lisp REPLs of the time.
    - kazinator 2y ago
      This is true. However in the world of BASIC-driven 8-bit micros, compilers did make a showing here and there, as third party offerings to accelerate and obfuscate an existing BASIC dialect.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Yeah, but mostly usable only when we got to 128 KB machines.
- 2y ago

by jll29 2y ago

bitwize 2y ago

Python is indeed the BASIC of today. I stoked my nephew's interest in programming by doing exactly what you said -- using Python with the pyturtle library. One flourish I'm particularly fond of is, we worked through the commands to draw a repeated object in the picture he was designing, and I said: "Now here's something programmers do, it's called refactoring. We're going to take this wheel here and make a function called 'wheel' that draws a wheel wherever you say. And then we're going to take the location and turn it into parameters for the 'wheel' function..." And on and on. He seemed really engaged. The ubiquity of microcomputer BASIC in the 80s -- often as the first thing users see, or the only thing they see absent a cartridge or disk or something loaded into the machine to run something else -- seemed to suggest that computers are meant to be programmed, the way pens are meant to be written with. It was a complete accident, of course, a side effect of market realities at the time: no one at the computer companies could think of what someone would want a microcomputer for, aside from video games. The devices were solutions still in search of problems. So the microcomputer manufacturers encouraged customers to invent their own uses and bundled a programming language that would let them do that. Once word processing, spreadsheets, and especially the internet took root, it became obvious what consumers would want a computer for, so the idea that they would be expected to program them fell by the wayside and programming tools became no longer easily accessible or even available except as a separate purchase. As a consequence we may not see the efflorescence of programmers among Xers to early millennials repeat itself the same way again. I don't even think it happened in the USA to the same degree that it did in the UK, thanks to Sir Clive Sinclair's ability to deliver cheap but serviceable and completely hackable units to even modest British homes; as a result, British computing, like British pop in the 80s, hit way different and became a source of endless fascination and influence.

musicale 2y ago
> The ubiquity of microcomputer BASIC in the 80s -- often as the first thing users see, or the only thing they see absent a cartridge or disk or something loaded into the machine to run something else -- seemed to suggest that computers are meant to be programmed, the way pens are meant to be written with. It was a complete accident, of course I don't think it was an accident. BASIC was designed to be a simple language that was efficient with limited hardware resources, easy for beginners to learn and use, and powerful enough to do useful things. It turned out to be a perfect fit for microcomputers for those reasons. Especially in an era before platform standardization and giant software ecosystems, end-user programming was assumed and intended. (Even more so with "educational" microcomputers like the BBC Micro.) > no one at the computer companies could think of what someone would want a microcomputer for, aside from video games On mobile (and probably PC as well), games still dominate app sales by a large margin. But in the early 1980s, microcomputer "business" (now "office" and "enterprise") software was already well established, including word processors (wordstar), spreadsheets (visicalc), databases (dbase) and software for mailing lists, billing, payroll, etc.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  A big difference between how BASIC was designed, and how many got introduced to it on 8 bit platforms, is that Dartmouth BASIC is compiled, not interpreted. It uses a approach similar to Lisp REPLs of the time.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    This is true. However in the world of BASIC-driven 8-bit micros, compilers did make a showing here and there, as third party offerings to accelerate and obfuscate an existing BASIC dialect.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Yeah, but mostly usable only when we got to 128 KB machines.
2y ago