5 Jan
2012
5 Jan
'12
5:57 p.m.
On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
For one, I didn't start the project, I joined it after the first
release; and for another, I am *deeply* familiar with that version of
BASIC because it's what I learned at age 11 and explored down to
unpublished entry points and code hacking on my own hardware at age 13
(by porting Mark Zimmerman's FLOPTRAN from BASIC1 to BASIC2 on the
PET), then used daily at my first job at age 15. I readily admit that
professional BASIC experience is uncommon, but there you have it.
On 5 January 2012 16:56, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks
at gmail.com> wrote:
> Five-ish years ago, I got involved with a thread on the
> author/futurist David Brin's blog because he was looking for a
> contemporary way to provide a BASIC environment for his, IIRC,
> 13-year-old son to learn on...
Since I just re-read the Salon.com article, even though he himself
used an Apple II in past years, he ended up buying an inexpensive C-64
and 1541 for his son.
For those that
might want to dabble lightly with 1980s Commodore BASIC
on a modern machine, let me shamelessly plug
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cbmbasic/
Wow. You chose to reimplement the poorest-quality BASIC I ever met,
back in the day! Er - why? From your comment, I have to guess that you haven't
met Tiny BASIC,
Apple Integer BASIC, Applesoft BASIC, TRS-80 Level 1 BASIC, Atari
BASIC, or TI 99/4a BASIC - I put all of those below CBM BASIC2 (not
BASIC1 from 1977), though I doubt someone looking into that pool from
the outside would make much differentiation among any of them.
In terms of string manipulation, complex expressions, control flow,
and variable and array type/quantity/amount/management, I'd put TRS-80
Level 1 BASIC, Tiny BASIC, and Atari BASIC at the bottom of that pile,
in that order (and if you don't know why I put Atari BASIC down there,
you haven't ever filled up your VTOC).
-ethan