B.a.s.i.c

[Kiop]

Beginners All-puropse Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) - who learnt this in school only for it to become obsolete with the introduction of PC's and the world wide web?

Looking back now I think what a waste of time it was - schools certainly got it wrong about BASIC being useful for our careers (I left school in 1985).

However, at the time I was fascinated by it and wrote quite a few games for the commodore PET, VIC-20 and Commodore 64. They weren't advanced games, I never sold any (at least not commercialy) but I was miles ahead of what they were teaching in the computer room and ended up doing a lot of people's course work for the exam (for a small fee of course).

Do we have any other BASIC programmers here? What are your memories of it?

10 Poke36879, 15
20 Input "what is your age",a
30 If a =>40 then print "All down hill from here mate"
40 if a <40 then print "You're still in nappies mate"
50 End

Or something like that, LOL.

[Richard1978]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

I remember writing a lot of programmes for my Acorn Electron with it, & doing QBasic on PCs in the mid 1990s.

I still have QBasic on my current PC but haven't used it much in recent years, as it's sometimes tricky to use with Windows XP.

[HG]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

I remember using BASIC at school for my Computer Studies CSE. Nothing complex, a few sounds and "pictures" to go with a quiz.

Watching Electric Dreams last night i was reminded of all the programming manuals that came with the early computers, you really were encouraged to try and learn it when you bought a computer.

[fatpizzaman]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

Myself and my siblings learned computer programming in BASIC with the SEGA SC-3000H we had from 1985 - 1989, and we used to create all these quirky little games.

I wouldn't know how to do it today, it's been aeons since I've done it. ;-)

[battyrat]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

Computing studies was a new thing back in 1980/81 when I had to choose the subjects I wanted to continue over my last few years with the school.Like everybody else I jumped at it but failed to get a place in class so ended up doing lessons I really had no interest in instead.I left school in 1983 and went straight into a factory.By then I had an old ZX81.First thing I done was buy a spectrum 16K.There were certainly a few manuels with the thing.But in those early home computing days we could easily walk into any newsagents or bookstore and walk out with a book full of games you had to program into the computer yourself.Magazines even had programs to type in.It was quite natural to pick up bits of programming and to learn a bit as well.Spectrums had Sinclair basic and BIN.Bin was great for writing character graphics for games.

The one thing that used to annoy me was when you forgot to put in a single letter or number,or accidently typed in the wrong thing the program would not work.You would then spend the rest of the day tracking down this error.Once found and sorted you hit enter and then found the game to be not very good at all.Then again,those were the days,and they could be just as fun as frustrating.

[Retrogames]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

The one thing that used to annoy me was when you forgot to put in a single letter or number,or accidently typed in the wrong thing the program would not work.You would then spend the rest of the day tracking down this error.Once found and sorted you hit enter and then found the game to be not very good at all.Then again,those were the days,and they could be just as fun as frustrating.

There was an article in Retro Gamer about these listings, apparently the typesetters used to chop code around to fit the page, so even if you typed everything in correctly it wouldn't run as it was in the wrong order! I now remember one c64 prog I typed in working.

[philipdalton]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

If anyone's still got a Sinclair ZX Spectrum try this and see what happens:

10 For A=0 To 7
20 Border A
30 Next A
40 Goto 10

I think that's how you do it, but with my memory not being that brilliant I might've got it wrong

[philipdalton]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

This thread has the potential to lead onto something else.
Does anyone know anything about programming in Visual Basic?
Someone offered me a Visual Basic programming course once for ....guess what?
No less than £3800.

[HG]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

This thread has the potential to lead onto something else.
Does anyone know anything about programming in Visual Basic?
Someone offered me a Visual Basic programming course once for ....guess what?
No less than £3800.

Yes, I've done some in Access Databases, largely self taught and using online forums and resources.

[philipdalton]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

I've got Blitz Basic, which games are written in, off the back of a magazine but unfortunately I've never got around to using it.

[spuggybridge]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

Remember doing computer studies at school and trying to learn basic on the BBC, was never much good though (never had the patience back then). As for it being a waste of time I see where you're coming from but I can't really agree because a lot of brilliant programmers started their careers from this point. Without basic we would probably never be at the point we are today, we have to start from somewhere after all.

[philipdalton]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

Remember doing computer studies at school and trying to learn basic on the BBC, was never much good though (never had the patience back then). As for it being a waste of time I see where you're coming from but I can't really agree because a lot of brilliant programmers started their careers from this point. Without basic we would probably never be at the point we are today, we have to start from somewhere after all.

The Windows operating system was initially designed partly in Visual Basic, at least my computer studies teacher at college told me that anyway.

[PC66]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

I don't think it could ever be said that learning BASIC was a waste of time. When the language was devised in the 1960's it was intended as a means for learning basic programming concepts, running as an interpretive language to avoid the longer compile/link/execute development cycle of the common high-level languages of the day (COBOL, FORTRAN et al), and with the ability to get something happening with only a few lines of source code, without the need to pre-declare variables, explicity specify I/O devices, declare the environment, etc. To that end, I think it served well, so was something of a natural choice to include when the home microcomputer revolution came along in the 1970's/80's, albeit that it then spawned numerous subtle - and incompatible - extensions as each manufacturer tailored the language to its own particular hardware.

I don't think that really mattered too much to the average home user, and even for many business users. For example, how many small businesses going for computerization in the 1980's ran something like a Commodore 8032 with printer and dual disk unit using accounts packages entirely custom-written in Commodore's own variant of BASIC?

The addition of more structured programming elements helped many emerging programmers start to learn that aspect of coding: Visual BASIC, Acorn/BBC BASIC with its addition of declared procedures, etc.

Speaking of BBC BASIC, some 30 years ago I started using a BBC Microcomputer and making use of its versatile I/O facilities to control various electronic projects. The ease of throwing together some quick code in "basic BASIC" (if you'll excuse the expression!) for some task coupled with the extensions in Acorn/BBC BASIC which gave easy direct access to hardware ports made it ideal for such use, and machines such as that are still extremely useful (and still being used) in that role today.

And as has already been mentioned, VB really had quite a following for a while as a major development language, and we saw the move to compiled BASIC. I don't doubt that some of today's up & coming programmers might well regard VB et al as being "old hat," but I think they sometimes don't realize just how much could actually be achieved with a reasonably good machine and a decent programming language and set of development tools say, 20 years ago. Many of them certainly have no concept of efficient programming.

But even for anyone who learned BASIC (of whatever variant) but has since abandoned it for other languages, I still don't think it could be said to have been a waste of time.

[Arran]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

Was BASIC good or bad in the hands of kids in the 1980s?

I learned to program at home using proper structured programming languages and only encountered traditional BASIC with its line numbers and lack of ability to define functions some time later. In comparison to programming with a structured programming language, BASIC appeared very strange and at the time I wondered how it was possible to create complex applications software with it. Since then I have programmed microcontrollers in assembly language so I have got a feel for not having many of the features found in higher level structured programming languages that many programmers using these languages take for granted nowadays. I have thought that BASIC is actually assembly language with a collection of macros for higher level functionality of interest to home users, like graphics and sound.

[zabadak]

Re: B.a.s.i.c

BASIC introduced some very poor practices, such as line-numbering, but was a great introduction to programming as it was almost entirely linear. Line 10, then line 20, then line 30 then line 40 says go to line 10 etc.