7 ms·

Oh man... Completely ignores Tiny Basic, Dr. Dobbs, Li-Chen Wang, Dennis Allison, Copyleft, All Wrongs Reversed, etc. There are some decent histories of BASIC

Oh man... Completely ignores Tiny Basic, Dr. Dobbs, Li-Chen Wang, Dennis Allison, Copyleft, All Wrongs Reversed, etc. There are some decent histories of BASIC through the Dartmouth era, so I can understand why they may want to de-emphasize that. My suspicion is, however, that BASIC became the 8-bit lingua franca not only because of Gates, Allen & Davidoff's work on the Altair but because of Wang and Pittman's work on Tiny BASIC. The TRS-80 initially shipped with a modified version of Wang's Tiny BASIC. The Apple ][ shipped initially with a Tiny BASIC like interpreter (Integer BASIC) written by Steve Wozniak. By 1980, all the popular micros had licensed BASIC from MSFT and it's important to understand why. But before understanding why homegrown Tandy, TI, Atari and Apple BASICs fizzled, you have to know they existed first. #OldManYellsAtClouds

Someone 5mo ago
> The Apple ][ shipped initially with a Tiny BASIC inspired interpreter (Integer BASIC) Citation needed. Wikipedia doesn’t mention this influence, for example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC), and Woz didn’t mention it as an influence in 2014 (https://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-original-apple-fr-1570573636 https://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-or...). > ascribed to Woz. I think it’s accepted that Woz wrote that basic interpreter. “Ascribed” makes it look as if there is some doubt about that.
- OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
  I think I meant to say both tiny basic and game basic were inspired by the similar non-msft basics, not that game/integer BASIC was inspired by Li-Chen Wang or Dennis Allison's work. Modified the text to be clearer. As for your interpretation of the word "ascribed," I can't help you there. I could go "attributed" or "alleged," but neither really helps. "Credited" is probably better, but it sounds like you're reacting with incredulity to the idea there are people who don't know Woz wrote Game BASIC. The use of "ascribed" here is to point out there were people other than Gates/Allen/Davidoff who wrote BASIC interpreters in the 70s.

Someone 5mo ago

> The Apple ][ shipped initially with a Tiny BASIC inspired interpreter (Integer BASIC) Citation needed. Wikipedia doesn’t mention this influence, for example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC), and Woz didn’t mention it as an influence in 2014 (https://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-original-apple-fr-1570573636 https://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-or...). > ascribed to Woz. I think it’s accepted that Woz wrote that basic interpreter. “Ascribed” makes it look as if there is some doubt about that.

OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
I think I meant to say both tiny basic and game basic were inspired by the similar non-msft basics, not that game/integer BASIC was inspired by Li-Chen Wang or Dennis Allison's work. Modified the text to be clearer. As for your interpretation of the word "ascribed," I can't help you there. I could go "attributed" or "alleged," but neither really helps. "Credited" is probably better, but it sounds like you're reacting with incredulity to the idea there are people who don't know Woz wrote Game BASIC. The use of "ascribed" here is to point out there were people other than Gates/Allen/Davidoff who wrote BASIC interpreters in the 70s.