The birth of BASIC.

[IanB]

For the nostalgic, all this "LET" greatness has been revived in Rust. Nice stuff eh!

I suspect COBOL had it first?

[JPortici]

I understand that BASIC can still used today for programming microcontrollers. A couple of systems I have heard of are BASICTools for ARM from Coridium:

https://www.coridium.us/coridium/shop/software/s01-basic

and as popularised in Practical Electronics and Silicon Chip magazines, MMBASIC on PIC32 microcontrollers :

https://micromite.org/micromites/

you have mikrobasic from mikroe, that's how they taught me in school (one year ASM, the year after mikrobasic, the year after mikroc, then GCC based compilers on windows became easy to install)
enjoy

[mfro]

Haha. BASIC.

Brought a whole generation into coding/computing that probably wouldn't even got close to it otherwise.

This whole generation needed to be retrained later to get rid of their bad habits because all they were able to produce was unmaintainable Spaghetti.

[floobydust]

Haha. BASIC.

Brought a whole generation into coding/computing that probably wouldn't even got close to it otherwise.

This whole generation needed to be retrained later to get rid of their bad habits because all they were able to produce was unmaintainable Spaghetti.

That it generated "spaghetti"- is this really true or myth regurgitated?
You can write disorganized, sloppy code in any programming language. As if C++ saved us from that.

For younger generations learning to program, I honestly feel sorry for them having to struggle with antique rubbish such as C. There is a need for a simple, no unexpected side-effects programming language so people can have fun learning to program, instead of head banging, and just get the job done.

Computing science making decent programming languages, is very much a failure. The academics bicker and put their ego first. They don't write large programs for a living and are generally caught up in fights over use of the semicolon for example.
Niklaus Wirth was great, his talks and languages as well- but who maintains a language, who "owns" it and can make changes is important. Lately it's ANSI committees.

[granzeier]

Bad code can be written in any language, and good code is also language independent. Even back in high school (mid-1970s) I discovered structured coding made things easier. I have written many good, well organized, programs in various dialects of BASIC. In the early 1990s, I was a database application programmer. We received data from clients on 9-track tapes, and I wrote utilities to convert from that EBCDIC (and others) to ASCII for our PC based databases. This was all done in Borland's TurboBASIC. That was a great language. While still in high school, I wrote a simulator for the Bell Labs' CardIAC computer - in the Time Share BASIC (TSB) on our HP-2000 computer.

I have also taught programming to hundreds of students. BASIC is much simpler to teach to beginners than other languages like C. "Why do I need to put a semi-colon at the end of my line?" "What is this double-equal (==) thing - what do you mean that I can define a variable when I just want to know if two things are equal?" Then there is the "best friend" of criminal hackers - buffer overflow. What kind of stupidity allows users to input any amount of key strokes? BASIC sets up a specific number of characters for an input buffer and that's it (you can still program around that if you want/need to.) In C the programmer has to put extra effort into preventing buffer overflow - and human nature being what it is, we are naturally lazy and often skip protecting our systems from those kinds of security leaks.

BASIC (especially in modern dialects) is a great language, which is easy to learn. Don't even try to say that it isn't a real language, or that it can't be used for real applications. BASIC has been used to write all sorts of "real" applications. DEC's Business BASIC was used throughout the 1960s and 1970s to write all of their business applications. HP's TSB ran their HP-2000 series in thousands of business, laboratory and educational settings. In the later 1970s, and 1980s hobbyists used BASIC (even tiny BASIC) to write, and play, music; to control lights and motors and other hardware; to read lab instruments, and control/adjust experiments; to control lighting, sound and other effects on stage; to run robotics in labs and manufacturing, and thousands of other applications. A huge amount of that BASIC coding was maintained, and even without too much trouble. Take a look at many of the numerous electronics and computing magazines from that era, and you will see thousands of examples, many of them in BASIC. There were even language (BASIC and other) interpreters, and compilers, written in BASIC.

As far as using BASIC on microcontrollers, BASCOM-AVR is a great (extremely powerful) language for the AVR series of chips. You can even get a demo, which is limited to 4K of code space (plenty of room for smaller applications) for free. I wrote an introductory text book for microcontrollers which used BASCOM-AVR. I had many great comments about the book and the ATtiny2313 kit included with it.

[Phil_G]

In the mid 80s BT was transitioning into PCs from various earlier systems, mostly standalone CP/M boxes but also Hinets and even Tontos, running essential services through some very obscure applications.
One of my ongoing jobs was format conversion  to PC apps, and an awful lot of it. External companies charged the earth for this service and as I'd done quite a bit of it anyway I was given the job.
Most systems had a serial print output which could be captured as ascii text and processed.  At the time I used BASIC like you would use awk, extracting, re-ordering, field parsing, sorting, converting...
these programs were quickly put together and would be used just once and only by me, so appearance and tidiness was much less important than function & flow. What mattered was minimising downtime and getting a system across asap.
For all its shortcomings BASIC was the ideal tool for the job, totally flexible with a quick turnaround.  At this point, before I get mugged I should say that I'm an assembler programmer since '78. BASIC has a place, it is and has been useful and its not right to jump on the 'lets trash basic' bandwagon, it deserves better 
[/soapbox]   
Cheers
Phil

[dave j]

This whole generation needed to be retrained later to get rid of their bad habits because all they were able to produce was unmaintainable Spaghetti.

Not in the UK. We had BBC BASIC with its REPEAT/UNTIL loops and procedures/functions with local variables to introduce us to structured programming. Even those with lesser home computers still had exposure to it as it was used in almost all schools for teaching about computers.

[BrianHG]

Haha. BASIC.

Brought a whole generation into coding/computing that probably wouldn't even got close to it otherwise.

This whole generation needed to be retrained later to get rid of their bad habits because all they were able to produce was unmaintainable Spaghetti.

Yes, in the beginning as I was learning, I did generate spaghetti code.  However, this was because I was self taught and fooling around with other example programs and games.  The spaghetti nature quickly ends once you tackle a large project, say something with more than 10-20 functions, then you have no choice but to improve your structural skills.  Otherwise you will never get much further than that.

I don't think this was the worst approach to programming as it was the only way I could have begun and at the time, the line number system of the small 48k Atari computer instead of a full authentic text editor style entry did force a few quick fixes.  However, you also need to remember at the time that Atari basic was a 1-2k rom and the smaller computer only had 4kb ram.  Anything more capable than line numbering system would have required a computer worth thousands of dollars with thousands of dollars worth of tools and third party software to properly implement.

Once I got my Amiga 1000 where we had a few quality basic compilers where the line number system was ditched for a full ascii text editor, my capabilities grew with the new tools and the 2.5 megabytes available to me.

[Phil_G]

Not in the UK. We had BBC BASIC with its REPEAT/UNTIL loops

Even National's NIBL basic from 1976 had DO UNTIL 

(big SC/MP fan...)

[jonpaul]

1973..1975 MITS Altair 8800  first kit computer 8 bit Intel  8080 16k, 32k RAM

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_334396

OS from Bill Gates Micro Soft Basic!
Was in Albuquerque, met Ed Roberts, founder.

A walk down memory lane...

Jon

[Phil_G]

Theres a Donald Alcock on sale in the UK:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/364146020882

[schmitt trigger]

This book was gifted to me circa 1980.

The previous owner didn’t have much use for it, and used it as a support to drill PCBs.
What a sin to destroy a book!

[schmitt trigger]

We all have written some sort of spaghetti code during our learning process.

To claim one never did, is similar to saying that one never fell from a bicycle when one was learning to ride it.

[pcprogrammer]

I knew the book looked familiar 

Check what I found on my bookshelf, along with several other books about the TRS-80 and basic.

[granzeier]

A nice Time article on the origins, and effects of, BASIC.

https://time.com/69316/basic/