24 Nov
2007
24 Nov
'07
9:39 a.m.
From: rtellason at verizon.net
Speaking of which, I have a vague recollection of "Tiny BASIC". Never did
actually use it, though. Any of you guys familiar with it? Is it all that
usable? At all extensible? I can see where it might be handy for some
stuff...
Hi
A search on the web will show a couple of listing of a version of Palo Alto
Tiny BASIC that I posted years ago. It was slighly modified from the
original to allow on to expand it. It had I/O for the Poly88 but it could
be easily connected to any serial streams terminal.
It fit in 2 2708s which was great for the Poly88. I wrote 3 extentions
that I used. These could be loaded on the fly from the cassette tape,
with the BASIC program that that used them.
I added PEEK, POKE and SAVE. PEEK and POKE were useful with
the Poly88's video. SAVE made it simple to save any new programs
that also need these extras.
The bad part was that the extended code had to be done in assembly
code and required a reasonable understanding of how Tiny BASIC
worked inside.
If one wanted to work with an extensible language, Forth is the most
flexible. It is also one of the best for understanding more complex
programming concepts. It isn't that it has them built in, it is that
it contains all the building blocks needed to create them.
Dwight
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