BASIC was my fourth language, after ALGOL-60, FORTRAN-II, and Philips PR8000 assembler. The first version I met was BASIC-PLUS, on RSTS-11. That's a compiler (to threaded code, like P-code, not to machine code). Soon after that I worked on RT-11 BASIC, which is an interpreter, and modified it to be a lab machine control system with interrupts and analog and digital I/O. Someone commented on "what if the first PCs had run APL". Shortly after reading the famous "Tablet" paper (Stephen Wolfram and his students at U of Illinois) I played a bit with that notion: a tablet computer supporting APL so you could program quickly because it requires so few characters per unit of work. The crucial miss in that concept is that PCs are not sold (primarily) to programmers but to application users, and for that an APL-focused machine is no advantage. paul

That's why I've been playing with FORTH on my Raspberry Pico microcontrollers (Travis Bemann's "Zeptoforth" dialect, to be precise). It's nice and compact, and it boots in milliseconds. Multicore, multitasking, lots of library modules... nice. paul

On 5/2/24 13:59, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote: Then there's the 8042 MCU-embedded BASIC, the BASIC stamp, etc. I have a little MicroPy board here that's fun to play with. --Chuck

compiled basics too longer to run and debug because of the compile time. Anything I did was limited to floppy disk, or later even hard disk speed, the greater speed from compiling could not be noticed. <pre>--Carey</pre>

On Fri, 3 May 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: Basic as an Operating System vs. An Operating system written in Basic? The original Acorn Archimedes (First ARM CPU system) had an OS initially called "Arthur" which was written in BBC Basic and assembler. It supported a graphical user interface - later re-written in assembler and called RISC-OS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_RISC_OS#Arthur -Gordon

Steve, Where would you fit the Tandy Model 100 in here? Ultimately it supported a disk drive, ran basic and also sported an expansion box that included video support and a floppy. -Ken On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 4:18 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: -- End of line JOB TERMINATED

On Fri, 3 May 2024, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: The "Coco" ("Color Computer") was similar to Microsoft Standalone BASIC, particularly in its disk format. The TRS80 models 1, 3, and 4 had file commands in their BASICs. They ran under TRS-DOS. The Saga Of TRSDOS: (long (TLDR?)) TRSDOS was created by Randy Cook as a work for hire. Although it was marketed as TRSDOS 2.0, Randy Cook never finished it, and documentation was inadequately sparse. When Radio Shack came out with their "expansion interface" and disk drives, they gave out TRSDOS 2.0, which barely worked. Randy Cook hurriedly came out with 2.1 , and then left Radio Shack. Radio Shack worked on 2.2 Clifford Ide, under pseudonym "Sam Jones" created an enormous collection of patches to TRSDOS, and called it APRDOS. Apparat marketed it, and changed the name to NEWDOS https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/apparat-newdos80 But, it was a patched version of TRSDOS. Both Randy Cook and Radio Shack were not amused. Apparat initially said that everybody who used it also had to buy TRSDOS. That didn't hold up well. So, they said that it was changed so much that there was no trace of TRSDOS in it. That didn't hold up well. Randy Cook's lawyer (who was also a programmer, and marketed a serial communications program) gathered witnesses, and typed BOOT.SYS/RV36 , running BOOT.SYS as if it were an executable, using one of the master passwords. The screen cleared, and displayed a full screen copyright message including "Copyright Randy Cook". Apparat settled and agreed to rewrite from scratch to create a non-infringing version (called "NEWDOS80"). That was actually very advantageous, as it made it possible to create a substantially improved product. Meanwhile, Radio Shack was frantically patching TRSDOS 2.2, and came out with TRSDOS 2.3 They changed the hidden copyright message from "Copyright Randy Cook" to "Copyright Tandy Corp" In addition to NEWDOS80, there were several other independents, including DOSPLUS. Most of which added support for double sided drives, and 80 tracks, and numerous other features not present in TRSDOS. In fact, when Micropolis started selling disk drives to TRS80 users, they included their own completely unrelated OS! Meanwhile, Randy Cook, no longer affiliated with Radio Shack, started his own company (ACS), and worked on further expansion of TRSDOS. He worked on adding in incredible features unheard of in microcomputer operating systems. He called it TRS80-DOS-3.0, but that wouldn't hold up for trademark reasons, so he renamed it VTOS 3.0 http://www.trs-80.org/vtos/ Although it was marketed, Randy Cook never finished it, and documentation was inadequately sparse (mostly just a list of features) Scott Adams, (of Adventure Internationsl, NOT Scott Adams of "Dilbert") cut a deal with Randy Cook to expand it and finish it. That was VTOS 4.0 Although it was marketed, Randy Cook never finished it, and documentation was inadequately sparse (mostly just a list of features) Lobo drives was in the lucrative market of marketing disk drives. They could buy drive, including the Shugart SA400 used by Radio Shack and re-sell tham at a substantial profit, and still be WAY cheaper than Radio Shack's prices for the same drive mechanism (~$250 Vs $500, although Radio Shacks case and power supply had a card extender that made them more convenient to install). Lobo decided to develop and market an expansion interface compatible with TRS80 model 1, with double density, and 8 inch drive support! But, there was a glitch. Model 1 TRSDOS, using a Western Digital 1771 chip used some strange address marks, including different ones for directory sectors than for data sectors. It is rumored that that was unintentional, and due to misreading, or misprinting of the 1771 data sheets. Lobo's expansion interface used a WD 1791 FDC, which could do MFM (double density). BUT, it COULD NOT write some of the address marks used by model-1 TRSDOS! Lobo set up another company, ("LSI" "Logical Systems, Inc"), to create a new operating system for it. They purchased rights to VTOS 4.0, and hired all of the best TRS80 assembly language programmers that they could find, such as Roy Soltoff, Bill Schroeder, and Tim Mann. Without Randy Cook. Their all-star team actually FINISHED it! And wrote a large binder of documentation. LSI called their new operating system LDOS 5.0 https://vtda.org/docs/computing/LSI/LSI_LDOS_51_Model_I_III.pdf Meanwhile, Radio Shack was coming out with their model 3, which had double density. Their "TRSDOS [for model3] Version 1.3" had the same problem with address marks! Radio Shack bought a license for LDOS 5.1, and released it as TRSDOS 6.0 Although Randy Cook grumbled, for the first time, he was getting ROYALTIES for TRSDOS, rather than just the paltry payment that he had originally gotten for the work for hire of TRSDOS 2.0 . -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

On Fri, 3 May 2024, KenUnix via cctalk wrote: The Model 100 BASIC (puportedly the last product that billg had active coding participation in) was, indeed, closely tied to the Microsoft Standalone BASIC. The external 3.5" "Tandy Portable Disk Drive" was a unique system, that used ordinary 2DD 3.5" floppies, but had a bizarre format, unlike anything else. It is even WAY more different than the 600RPM full-height Sony drives. Although it would be possible, with a system supporting FM/single-density to write code to read those disks, with their half-track FM sectors, you would be far better off to connect that drive to a serial port and use its internal circuitry (there have existed short programs to talk to it). But, the video and floppy external expansion box for the Model 100 uses Microsoft Standalone BASIC MFM format and directory structure on 5.25" floppies. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

Hardly. The Model 100 basic had a ton of features including modem support, date/time, and so forth. Lots of programs and utilities were written in the BASIC, and games such as Heartbreaker worked perfectly. There was also a really amazing compiler that could compile basic programs to make them smaller/even faster. I've got it on one of my Model 100 floppy disks (which still works, note the belt will turn to gunk but it's an easy thing to replace.) C On 5/3/2024 3:35 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:

On Fri, 3 May 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote: Marc McDonald, Microsoft's first SALARIED employee, designed and implemented 8-bit FAT for the NCR 8200 and Micorsoft Standalone Disk BASIC-80 in 1977. Numerous "authoritative" sources, including Microsoft's "MS-DOS Encyclopedia" (ISBN 1-55615-049-0), as well as Manes' "Gates : How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America" (ISBN 0-385-42075-7) explicitly state that it was the idea/inspiration for Tim Paterson's (author of QDOS, MS-DOS, ...) use of FAT, while sharing a booth with Microsoft at NCC (trade show) Chicago 1977. "Remembering his conversation at NCC with Marc McDonald about File Allocation Tables in his unfinished, large, and never-released 8-bit MIDAS operating system, Paterson decided that the FAT scheme was a better way to handle disk information than the way CP/M did it." The MS-DOS Encyclopedia says that it was an implementation on NCR. I've never seen the NCR implementation, but the NEC PC8001[A] and PC8801 were quite common. 20 years ago, Sellam and I helped Don Maslin decipher such a disk from an NEC9801 8" disk. And Lee brought me an Okidata standalone BASIC disk from Russia. The Coco uses the same basic disk directory structure, with a few minor differences (including calling it a "GAT" ("Granule Allocation Table") instead of a FAT. The external 5.25" disk drive for the Radio Shack Model 100 also uses the same directory structure. In the various instances of the Standalone BASIC, there are variations in the details of the size and exact form of the directory entries and the size and number of FAT entries. They put the directory, both FAT and file name based entries, on a track near the seek center of the disk. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

Yes, Microsoft certainly did not invent linked list allocation. But, the Microsoft implementation of the existing idea happened to be what inspired Tim Paterson to do it. On Fri, 3 May 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

BASIC-PLUS (part of RSTS) had a weird floating point history. The original version, through RSTS V3, used 3-word floating point: two words mantissa, one word exponent. Then, presumably to match the 11/45 FPU, in version 4A they switched to your choice of 2 or 4 word float, what later in the VAX era came to be called "F" and "D" float. One curious thing about floating point formats of earlier computers is that they came with wrinkles not seen either in IEEE nor in DEC float. As I recall, the 360 is really hex float, not binary, with an exponent that gives a power of 16. CDC 6600 series mainframes used a floating point format where the mantissa is an integer, not a fraction, and negation is done by complementing the entire word. The Electrologica X8 is yet another variation, which apparently came from an academic paper of the era: it treats the mantissa as an integer too, like the CDC 6600, but with a different normalizationn rule. THe 6600 does it like most others: shift left until all leading zeroes have been eliminated. (It doesn't have a "hidden bit" as DEC did.) But in the EL-X8, the normalization rule is to make the exponent as close to zero as possible without losing bits. So an integer value is normalized to the actual integer with exponent zero. And since there is no "excess n" bias on the exponent, the encoding of an integer and of the identical normalized floating point value are in fact the same. paul

On 5/3/24 17:48, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: I seem to recall that MCBA's business applications were originally coded in DG BASIC. --Chuck

On Fri, May 03, 2024 at 02:51:06AM +0000, Just Kant via cctalk wrote: A bit of perspective: the equivalent of $400-500 (~£200-250) was a couple of weeks salary in the UK at the time. Unless it could be written-off as a business expense, the purchase of that "cheap" compiler just wasn't happening.

On Thu, May 2, 2024, 7:58 PM Just Kant via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: Certainly a very subjective statement. Sellam

Thinking back over the last couple of months, I realize that most of my recent programming has been in Linux Bash scripts. --Chuck

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Mike Katz wrote: I wasn't around Dartmouth, and my first experiences with BASIC were all interpreted. I had run a trivial program in it on a Silent 700 connected through a phone line, long before I got my first personal computer (TRS80). Thank you for the details of the history. When Microsoft introduced "BASCOM" (their BASIC compiler), my first uses of it were primarily to make my source code less easily accessible to would-be infringers. :-) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

Considering the time that it was introduced to the world, and what it was intended to do, and what it did do, and how it went on to become something much, much greater than what Kemeny and Kurtz ever envisioned (even though they didn't like much of it), BASIC does not get nearly as much credit as it deserves. Sellam On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 4:05 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

In ‘81 FORTRAN77 was the first language I learnt, but it was BASIC that started my IT career. I was writing programs at Griffith University for various lecturers and research staff. This was before the uni even had a dedicated Computer Science Degree. If it wasn’t for BASIC, I’d probably be a High School teacher. What a career change. //m On Thu, 2 May 2024 at 9:34 AM, KenUnix via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

IMHO, “C” nomenclature really screwed up the equality vs assignment statements. The == made it difficult to understand especially if you came from a language that didn’t have it. Basically all languages before “C”. Sent from my iPhone

To be sure, BASIC was hardly unique in terms of the 1960s interactive programming languages. We had JOSS, PILOT, IITRAN and a host of others, based on FORTRAN-ish syntax. not to forget APL, which was a thing apart. --Chuck

APL is very much alive - it was invented in the '60s. Lisp is slightly older and it, as well, is still in active use - and it's older than FORTRAN, which was the inspiration for BASIC. From: "Sellam Abraham via cctalk" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Cc: "Sellam Abraham" &lt;sellam.ismail(a)gmail.com&gt; Sent: Wednesday, May 1, 2024 4:37:46 PM Subject: [cctalk] Re: BASIC On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 4:36 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: And where are all those other languages today? I rest my case. ;) Sellam

CMS PIPELINES was a mainframe implementation of a “standard" UNIX facility (with some small extensions, e.g. multiplexed pipelines). They are about 85% congruent. ok bear.

On 5/1/24 18:43, Norman Jaffe via cctalk wrote: Lisp is VERY VERY much alive, but rarely seen.  The emacs editor on unix-related systems, (and several other editors on Linux hide emacs from you, but it is the editing engine down underneath.)  AI geeks use Lisp for a variety of things. Jon

Microsoft loves to take languages developed by others and transmogrify them into the "Microsoft Universe". Quick Basic, Visual Java, Visual Basic, Visual C# (barely resembles C) and the worst offender of all Visual C++ .NET. Your post reminded me that Postscript is an actual programming language as well. On 5/2/2024 11:24 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

I still have Microsoft's first product somewhere, in my garage I think. 4K and 8K BASIC on Paper tape. Alas, no paper tape reader anymore.. On Thu, May 02, 2024 at 01:30:33PM -0500, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote: -- Bill Duncan, | http://billduncan.org/ bduncan(a)beachnet.org | - linux/unix/network/cloud +1 416 697-9315 | - performance engineering, SRE

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: I didn't start until May 29, 1965. I had previously been doing some keypunching, and 084 counting sorter. IBM did the data processing for the CBS "National Drivers Test"; they actually succeeded in using port-a-punch cards sent through the US postal system! My father did the analysis. You can see him behind Walter Cronkite, frantically manually adding numbers where IBM's flawed results didn't add up close enough to 100%. He decided that contracting out programming was too risky. On May 29, he placed a copy of Mc Cracken and Decima Anderson's books on the dining room table. And, we started to learn the basics of programming. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

I recall IITRAN for the IBM 7044, and am i correct that there was an IITRAN for the Univac 1108, which was significantly different? <pre>--Carey</pre>

On 5/1/24 23:00, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk wrote: I believe that IITRAN was moved from the 7040 to a 360/40 for a few years, then to an Univac 1108. All architectures very different from one another. I believe that the S/360 ran DOS/360 with the IITRAN running in a foreground partition. Ron Hochsprung, if he's still around, may recall more accurately. --Chuck

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: What would our world be like if the first home computers were to have had APL, instead of BASIC? APL was incredible. I was amazed. I was immediately able to do a few simple things that were useful for my boss and myself, and writing simple programs within hours. Its matrix arithmetic was awesome. APL typeball on a selectric terminal at GSFC, . . . Some of the keys were re-labeled, but there was a chart on the wall of which keyboard characters were which APL symbols. My cousin (David Ungar) referred to APL as "terse". He said that you could write a word processing program in a single line, but that was well past my abilities. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: The extended character set was an important obstacle to its acceptance. Besides keyboard (masking tape) and output (APL typeball, special character generator, or having to substitute combinations of character), many people were unwilling to even try something with a different character set. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

On Wed, 1 May 2024, Mike Katz wrote: sweet At least one of the ATI EGA boards had a daughter board available to be able to use it in Compaq luggables. (Compaq CGA, Compaq EGA, ATI EGA with daughter board) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

On 5/1/2024 7:51 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: Maybe not instead of BASIC but I had APL on my TRS-80. bill

I’m not certain what constitutes the original foundations of BASIC(Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) but to my knowledge it began with J. G. Kemeny and T. E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1964. Apple BASIC and GWBASIC were well established when I began experimenting with them in early 1980’s. By mid-80’s I was running both on a PC and Coleco ADAM. I wrote a program using GWBASIC for cataloging my books and magazines. Happy computing, Murray 🙂 On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 6:56 AM Liam Proven via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

On 5/2/24 07:02, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > My guess is that the languages you use routinely are the ones that work best, and which languages those are depends on where you work and on what projects. For example, I don't *like* C (I call it a "feebly typed language") and C++ not either, but my job uses these two plus Python. > Now Python is actually my favorite (though recently I've done a bunch of work in FORTH). I like to mention that, in 50 years or so, I have only encountered two programming languages where I went from "no knowledge" to "wrote and debugged a substantial program" in only one week -- Pascal (in graduate school) and Python (one job ago). Reminds me of the brief trend for so-called "Natural Language" programming in the 70s. NLP for short. "Take the 6rh item on the list and print it" sort of stuff. Apparently, it has resurfaced in the AI community. Problem is that people don't think like computers, even AI-equipped ones. --Chuck

The first "professional software" I wrote (almost) out of University in 1979 was a package to emulate the mainframe APL\Plus file primitives on a CP/M APL variant. Used to facilitate porting of mainframe APL applications to microcomputers. I'm still an APL adherent since the late 1960s, but it was probably too heavy-weight, with obstacles noted elsewhere (character-set, radical programming paradigm), to be successful in the early days of microcomputing. Although the MCM-70 was an amazing feat of technology. Too bad because the language itself lends itself to learning by anyone with an understanding of high school algebra. Iverson et al started scratching the surface of introducing computing to elementary/high-school students using APL with success in the 1970s. I myself learned it as my first programming language by just reading a book and hacking while in 7th grade. Further info: THE USE OF APL IN TEACHING — Software Preservation Group <https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Papers/196912_The%20Use%20of%20APL%20In%20Teaching_320-0996-0.pdf/view> INTRODUCING APL TO TEACHERS — Software Preservation Group <https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Papers/197207_Introducing%20APL%20To%20Teachers_320-3014.pdf/view> APL in Exposition — Software Preservation Group <https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Papers/197201_APL%20In%20Exposition_320-3010.pdf/view> Lee Courtney On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 3:56 AM Liam Proven via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: -- Lee Courtney +1-650-704-3934 cell

Paul, Is this the Lambda/VLSI Design magazine you refer to: Lynn Conway's VLSI Archive: Main Links (umich.edu) <https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/VLSIarchive.mainlinks.html#VLSIDesMag> ? Thanks! Lee On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 1:00 PM Paul Koning &lt;paulkoning(a)comcast.net&gt; wrote: -- Lee Courtney +1-650-704-3934 cell

Ah, but it does show up elsewhere: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/ClassicDesigns/RSA/RSA.L4Q80.pdf <http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/ClassicDesigns/RSA/RSA.L4Q80.pdf>

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 2:48 PM Liam Proven via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: I sucked at math pretty much throughout school. I took first level Calculus three times before I finally got my mind wrapped around the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (with a little help from LSD in showing me infinity). However, it never prevented me from writing rather involved and complicated computer programs starting in my teen years. For college, I decided I was either going to get into MIT or not go at all, and when I was told that my math grades would not cut it to get into MIT, well then that settled it. I somehow managed to be successful in spite. Thus proving to be complete horseshit all the educators that said if you want to get into a computer career you must be good at math. That worked. It took me a weekend and was no direct use because at the Very nice. By implementing the algorithm in the computer it planted it in your mind. Great story to illustrate how great a mind-building tool the computer and programming is. It could be said that my math skills were really lacking in the area of logic, in that I did pretty OK in Algebra 1 and 2, but barely passed Geometry as I could never get proofs right, and I ended up with a D in Trigonometry (but there were extenuating circumstances with that). It could have been because I hated homework and studying and Geometry and Trig stuff requires a lot of memorization. But I noticed that when I started going back to school in my 30s towards earning a degree my years of programming had structured my mind to where I could break down problems into little steps and then solve each individually until I arrived at the final answer, much like how one writes a computer program. About a dozen years ago I took up law as a "hobby" and threw myself into that. It turns out programming and law share very similar constructs: a pleading is like a program; the rules of court are the syntax of the basic "programming language" in which the pleading is written; case law are like library calls; and the court is the computer. You submit your program/pleading to the computer/court and it runs...or not, and crashes. And just like a computer, I started to figure out ways that the court can be hacked ;) Anyway, I noticed that when I went back to recreational 6502 programming a few years ago, not only did everything come back to me relatively quickly from my teens, but I found that I was just much better at assembling code, which I attribute to my law hobby. It then began to seem that my practice of law got better after I spent long periods writing 6502 code. Each lent themselves towards helping me get better at the other. It was awesome synergy. But the point is: not everyone can do "high school algebra." I do not ... I think it has more to do with just learning the construct, or the language, of the subject. Once you get over that hump, one's basic intelligence then fills in. Every subject has its particular jargon and principles, and having basic competency in that subject is really in memorizing the jargon and principles so you can properly "speak in the language" of the subject. It was hard going back to BASIC programming after programming in C and other higher level languages for some many years, but once I got back into it (Applesoft specifically) and remembered all the structured programming techniques my high school computer science teacher forced us to learn, and then applied my years of subsequent experience in crafting and organizing programs, the limitations became easy to overcome. It's fun to overcome the limitations of a simple language and still make a good program, and where I need some specific functionally I desire, Applesoft is extensible through the & "command", which is more of a machine language bridge in that the BASIC interpreter will jump to a user-definable vector at which you put your custom token interpretation code. For example, I made an entire low resolution graphics library that supports sprites and background animation with masking and other advanced features and implemented it by re-purposing existing BASIC command tokens for speed of processing. Yeah, I'm an adult, enjoying programming in BASIC, but it's fun. Those versed in APL would just as readily apprehend and remember an APL program, same as those versed in BASIC. But for one who never did any sort of programming, it's probably all Greek to them. (My apologies to the Greeks.) Sellam

On 5/7/24 10:31, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: That is, or at least wasn't uncommon at all. 50 years ago, the guy in the cube across from mine would take 3 months off to go to Vegas and play trombone. The guy immediately adjacent to my cube held a doctorate in piano from IU, but preferred to play clarinet. I have lots of anecdotes about that type of stuff. For example, an engineer chum had married a few months prior. At an informal gathering (the hostess had a stock of musical instruments and invited folks to feel free to participate), I was noodling around on the piano and the guy, who by then, was a little tipsy, sat down alongside me. He asked if he could have a turn at the ivories. Sure, I jokingly suggested that he give his rendition of the Goldberg Variations--which he promptly proceeded to do, straight through, right to the final aria--from memory. His new wife was in tears at that point. She had no inkling that he was a piano performance graduate of Juiliard who found engineering more interesting than giving piano lessons. The couple didn't even own a piano. People are strange--and interesting. --Chuck

Paul Koning via cctalk [07/05/2024 19.31]: Mathemathics and music is not a rare combination - see Tom Lehrer, for instance. -- Hilsen Harald

On 5/8/2024 10:30 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: Too bad it isn't reciprocal. I was great at math from a very early age. Did Algebra and Geometry in grade school. I have at least a half dozen instruments and I suck at all of them. I can play very technically on most of them but I have no art and can not put any real feeling into the music I play. But then, I only play for myself so I guess it really doesn't matter./ :-) bill

On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 3:25 PM Harald Arnesen via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: I am, of course, thinking of the well-known book 'Godel, Escher and Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid' -tony

On 02/05/2024 01:51, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: I don't know, but if you had asked "What would our world be like if the first home computers were to have had SmallTalk or even ALGOL instead of BASIC?" I would have said "much better". I started out with FORTRAN and 6800 assembler, but my first real programming job was in BASIC. I am fortunate in that they thought me Pascal in university, and I then got exposed to a bunch of other real high level languages - if I hadn't, and had continued with BASIC, I would probably have ended up as a pretty crap programmer. Julf

On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 7:51 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: The Ampere WS-1? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere_WS-1 Definitely more stylish. KJ

Then there  was Phantasm for basic  Gavin wrote! Sent from AOL on Android On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 8:44 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk&lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: BASIC was always a popular language in the Hewlett-Packard world. From the HP 2000 timesharing BASIC that was popular in educational settings similar to the original DTSS, To BASIC/3000 on the HP 3000 which was a first-class language with both interpreter and compiler (producing very fast code), to the HP 250/260 which used BASIC as their primary development language, Rocky Mountain BASIC in the technical world, the Series 80 microcomputers, HP Business Basic again on the 3000 which was probably largest and most complex language system ever created for the Classic 16-bit 3000 systems and which was intended to be both a migration path for 250/260 applications to MPE and to be a new standard Basic across multiple HP platforms. From 1980-1986 or so I worked for an HP OEM / ISV whose "ERP" (we didn't call them that yet) package was written in BASIC on the HP 3000. It was limited to Letter-digit variable names but was quite performant and had its own API into the IMAGE DBMS etc. BASIC got used for lots of "serious" development.

Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote: I first got acquainted with computers in 1978-79 while in 8th grade, precisely on an HP3000 with BASIC. I was hooked. Carlos.

That's one reason I like FORTH: it's just as compact, perhaps more so, fast, and much more flexible and extensible than BASIC. I didn't know MINC BASIC, should compare it with the "LABBASIC" I created in college. The one line description is identical; mine ran on an 11/20 with AD01, AD11, KW11-P and DR11-A. The programmable clock enabled stuff like take a vector of samples spaced at a tightly controlled time interval, or run bits of BASIC code from timer (or DR11) interrupts. paul