4. Basic and ARM: engineering expertise inside the BBC Micro | BBC Micro at 40

The BBC set a high bar on the Beeb’s programming language: it had to be powerful yet accessible and structured enough to “encourage good practice”.
BBC Basic was one of the BBC Micro’s best-loved and most defining features.
Still used today, BBC Basic outlasted other Basics and produced a generation of coders.
Sophie Wilson wrote BBC Basic.
Acorn eventually needed a processor to replace the first BBC Micro’s MOS 6502. Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber developed the ARM chip.
Bigger and more specialised technology companies with larger resources had tried to develop microprocessors with mixed results. What made tiny Acorn decide it could succeed?
Sophie Wilson discusses the development of the BBC BASIC and ARM.
Recorded winter 2021.

[@forinti]

BBC Basic is incredible. The fact that it enables inline assembly and also allows you to use its internal routines from assembler is just fantastic.

[@cigmorfil4101]

That inline assembler comes from the BBCs father: the Acorn Atom (which also gave BBC Basic the ? and ! operators, along with the full stop abbreviations, the $strings (as well as the normal string$)).

[@lovemadeinjapan]

I do have some doubts. Things I don't like in BBC BASIC is that it does not recognize keywords in lower case, many good BASIC's do this, it has non-standard multi-line list, with a comma instead of a - (LIST 10-20 does not work, you need to type LIST 10,20), and it has no EDIT function, so no EDIT 1000 for example. Also it is very tolerant to dirty programming, you can leave out THEN or OR, and it still works.

[@johnkoenig8739]

Taught myself BBC BASIC when my parents bought me a Beeb when I was still in school back in 83. Particularly loved the use of functions and procedures. Now 40 years later and I’m still just as enthusiastic as I was in school developing software albeit in, amongst other disciplines, RPGILE on IBM iSeries.

[@Colin_Ames]

Truly amazing.

[@damianbutterworth2434]

WOW. I love seeing the hero`s from back in the beginning. I learnt BASIC when I was 12 and found a IBM machine when I was on a YTS course at Marconi at the age of 16. Instead of sweeping up etc I asked if I could use the IBM as no one else knew how to use it. I ended up making charts from the data to show to the upper managers on the reject rate for Space SOS microchips. I printed the program as wall paper in my bedroom.

[@damianbutterworth2434]

Oh I have a 1980`s ARM chip in an Acorn A3000 in my bedroom. Sad really lol.

[@edgeeffect]

I loved the built-in assembler, and would love to still be writing my assembler code with a high level language wrapped around it still to this day.
The only issue I ever had with BBC BASIC was where is WHILE/WEND... even Microsoft BASIC had WHILE/WEND.... a BASIC with WHILE/WEND **and** REPEAT/UNTIL would have been fabulous!

[@NotMarkKnopfler]

If you use the Forth programming language you can do exactly that 😁

[@archibaldbuttle7]

BBC BASIC V on the ARM had WHILE. It had a bunch of other more modern language features too.
Coming from BBC BASIC, encountering MS BASIC was a painful experience given its lack of functions and procedures, things I had taken for granted

[@GuyDawson]

"More conventional languages. BCPL..." LoL! That said, I did my O-Level Computer Science in BCPL on my BBC Micro.

[@tomkinsg]

Back in school in the 80s we would debate what was better the BBC micro (I had a very early model a) or the spectrum and other Sinclair products. What sets them apart, which we obviously didn't know then, is what followed. Does the Sinclair line have any legacy to speak of?

[@tnmoc]

Both manufacturers' products inspired a generation of programmers. Hopefully we'll look into that later this year.

[@lovemadeinjapan]

The Spectrum BASIC manual is the GOAT. It is such a fun manual, with nice graphics, and all the BASIC commands for dealing with sprites, shapes, sounds. You WAN'T to make your own games if you have it in your hands. No BASIC comes close.

[@gadgetdeca]

素晴らしい👍👍👍　❤❤❤ 😊

[@EuanWebster]

Amazing woman.

[@rbee3936]

Well, man really...

[@forinti]

GOTO label would have been much better. What a lost opportunity!

[@archibaldbuttle7]

That's an arguably unnecessary feature when you have procedures and functions.

[@taipo101]

This knocks python into the ground. Hate the snake

[@lovemadeinjapan]

bbc.basic.library.snakegame.draw.snake.head (snake.head.x,snake.head.y)
Yeah, python sucks.