BASIC Past, Present, and Future with Cory Smith
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- Опубліковано 24 чер 2024
- Part history and part analysis of how BASIC has changed and yet remained unchanged for 60 years; including the "Microsoft" influence (of almost 50 years).
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Cory, in your history of BASIC, you left out the Tektronix 4051 vector graphics microcomputer introduced in 1975 with a Motorola 6800 CPU and Tektronix 4050 BASIC in 32KB of ROM and 32KB of RAM which featured double-precision floating point, GPIB I/O to tape, floppy and hard disk peripherals plus plotters and digitizing tablets. Tek 4050 BASIC supported 1024x780 vector graphics on an internal 11-inch storage tube CRT with 72 character x 35 lines of text in six international fonts. Tektronix also introduced a series of BASIC Solution Library programs at that time including: 4 volumes of Statistics, 2 volumes of Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Business Planning, Modeling and Reporting and Scientific - each volume including all the programs on a quarter-inch data tape cartridge that would plug into the 4051 internal tape drive and autoload the library menu by pressing AUTOLOAD on the keyboard. Yes, this series of Tektronix 4050 computers targeted commercial, government, scientific and military customers - but so did the PC.
Always nice to see the people from Tandy and Radio Shack. My 2nd professional dev job (4th IT job) was in west Fort Worth and several of my mentors were former Tandy/RS people. Great memories!
10 PRINT "Excellent Presentation dude!"
20 GOTO 10
I was 15 as my entry into computers were C64 (and Vic20). Stunned when learning that “other Basics” didn’t peek nor poke, or use funny symbols for fast code entry…😅
Good coverage on the topic! Interpreted vs compiled, both approaches do have their merits- interpreted can take less resources (fit in 2K-4K ROMs), and easier to dynamically alter the behavior right in the middle of runtime (like scripting). PEEK/POKE became suitable for micros and single-user systems. In larger multi-user systems (like the earlier mainframes), you'd need to be careful on allowing such open access to main memory. Both VB and Delphi were great, I used both in mid-1990s as well. Also check out BASLOAD on the Commander X16, a new approach that adds symbolic goto, long variable names, and other features to the classic Commodore BASIC (while still running on-system).
I make use of GPT daily, for my professional work, but I'd still say that taking its outputs at face value without fact-checking is a very silly idea. The prevalence of hallucinations may seem acceptable when the topic is widely documented, but as the topic becomes more obscure, the prevalence of hallucinations approaches 100%.
It's utterly bonkers to me to implement into OS' etc. something that, when you ask it to list 10 things, it lists 9 and you have to ask where the 10th is? :D Or ask it things that are on Wikipedia, it will hallucinate something wildly different. This example was about the death and burial of some LOTR characters (that weren't shown in the movies).
I am gratified that you at least experienced the refined purity of Object Pascal. 😊
ATARI ST and Amiga had some great Basics, first and foremost GFA-Basic and Omikron-Basic. They were so powerful and easy to use that regular people made amazing programs with these, just like it was intended by Kemeny and Kurtz.
Has anyone heard of S-Basic? It was a compiled, not interpreted basic, that was available in the early 1980's. One reviewer criticized it as being Pascale with the syntax of Basic. I ddid not see that as a problem. And what about Python or Rust with the syntax of Basic, for that matter?
Wasn't PowerBasic supposed to make a version for Linux?
Check out a Danish programming language called COMAL from 1975 and onwards. It was BASIC extended with features for structured programming.
Nothing about ROM-BASIC on the IBM systems from the PC to the PS/2s? - We have a page at the 'Ardent-Tool' about the versions.
Yes... I missed a whole lot of things... as it turns out, it's pretty hard to fit 60 years of stuff into less than 60 minutes. ;-) The page you point out sounds interesting, do you have a direct link?
Where does HP timeshare basic fit in here? Many in my generation use this in schools. Our sysadmin had a multiuser version that ran on a single cpu and supported 4 terminals. I don't think it was based on 2000/Access.
Cory, have you ever explored the world of Multi-Valued aka Pick BASIC? I don't see any links on your gotBASIC page to this whole other world of BASIC. Let me know if you have at least heard of it.
Very interesting... I haven't gone down that rabbit hole as yet. Do you know if there is any sort of emulation option for this? And links to this would be appreciated.
I did a little bit of coding in pick basic (databasic) on a McDonnell Douglas mini during the early 90's, though honestly cannot remember much about it. A Few other obscure basics: Prime Basic for Prime mini computers (had built in matrix handling), Hisoft Basic for the Atari Falcon and Finally MGT Sam Coupe Basic for the machine of the same name. (a sinclair spectrum on steroids from the late 1980's)
Ps. Interesting talk Cory.
#12:30 - Another BASIC: Locomotive BASIC for the Amstrad CPC.
Also, BBC BASIC was preceded by Acorn BASIC.
You forgot Atari Basic (8-bit computers) was not Microsoft Basic.
GFA BASIC.
This one is certainly on my list of ones to dig more into when I can carve out the time.
I'm not True BASIC. I'm not even Street BASIC. I'm Ghetto BASIC!
I relate. 😎
*True BASIC*
*BASICA*
??