4 ms·

BASIC – The Most Consequential Programming Language in the History of Computing

26 points by axiomdata316 2y ago

breput 2y ago
He's not wrong. Despite Edsger Dijkstra's infamous quote[0], it is a fact that most late Boomer/Gen X's first programming experience was probably with BASIC. For some people, it ended at GOTO 10, but for others it was a springboard into 6502 machine language, and then degenerating into C or Pascal, and devolved from there. Everyone has to start somewhere and BASIC is fine by me. [0] https://www.cs.scranton.edu/~mccloske/dijkstra_quotes.html https://www.cs.scranton.edu/~mccloske/dijkstra_quotes.html
deterministic 2y ago
I will argue that Python is the BASIC of today. Am I wrong? If yes why?
_mlbt 2y ago
As a child QBasic was amazing. It came with fun example games (Nibbles and Gorillas), a friendly IDE, thorough online help, and batteries included to write just about anything you could want on a MS-DOS 5.0 PC. I spent so many hours tinkering with it.
wduquette 2y ago
My first experience in programming was on DEC PDP-11 rebranded and sold as a kit by Heath as the H-11. My dad built it around 1976/77. It with a paper tape reader and punch, assembler and linker, and a BASIC interpreter. Later we upgraded it with a dual 8" floppy drive unit (as big as a tower PC case is now) and the Heath-branded version of DEC's RT-11 O/S. We had Assembler, Fortran, Focal,... and BASIC. I learned to program by typing in games from Dave Ahl's original 101 BASIC Games, as published by DEC...which usually involved porting them from whatever dialect they were written in (there were several, all sold with different DEC systems) to the version we had. Younger folks shudder at the idea of spaghetti code; I've shuddered at the real thing. I've used BASIC on the H-11, the Apple II, the CompuColor II, the Commodore Pet, the TRS-80, the DEC VAX, the Kaypro-4, the IBM PC, and some weird HP supermicro, the HP-98-mumble-mumble. In most cases I moved on to Pascal as soon as I could; but BASIC was the one that let me bootstrap myself into a career in software engineering.

26 points by axiomdata316 2y ago

He's not wrong. Despite Edsger Dijkstra's infamous quote[0], it is a fact that most late Boomer/Gen X's first programming experience was probably with BASIC. For some people, it ended at GOTO 10, but for others it was a springboard into 6502 machine language, and then degenerating into C or Pascal, and devolved from there. Everyone has to start somewhere and BASIC is fine by me. [0] https://www.cs.scranton.edu/~mccloske/dijkstra_quotes.html https://www.cs.scranton.edu/~mccloske/dijkstra_quotes.html

deterministic 2y ago

I will argue that Python is the BASIC of today. Am I wrong? If yes why?

_mlbt 2y ago

As a child QBasic was amazing. It came with fun example games (Nibbles and Gorillas), a friendly IDE, thorough online help, and batteries included to write just about anything you could want on a MS-DOS 5.0 PC. I spent so many hours tinkering with it.

wduquette 2y ago

My first experience in programming was on DEC PDP-11 rebranded and sold as a kit by Heath as the H-11. My dad built it around 1976/77. It with a paper tape reader and punch, assembler and linker, and a BASIC interpreter. Later we upgraded it with a dual 8" floppy drive unit (as big as a tower PC case is now) and the Heath-branded version of DEC's RT-11 O/S. We had Assembler, Fortran, Focal,... and BASIC. I learned to program by typing in games from Dave Ahl's original 101 BASIC Games, as published by DEC...which usually involved porting them from whatever dialect they were written in (there were several, all sold with different DEC systems) to the version we had. Younger folks shudder at the idea of spaghetti code; I've shuddered at the real thing. I've used BASIC on the H-11, the Apple II, the CompuColor II, the Commodore Pet, the TRS-80, the DEC VAX, the Kaypro-4, the IBM PC, and some weird HP supermicro, the HP-98-mumble-mumble. In most cases I moved on to Pascal as soon as I could; but BASIC was the one that let me bootstrap myself into a career in software engineering.