teaching programming to kids - Re: Looking for 8080/Z80 BASIC

________________________________ From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, January 4, 2012 4:16 PM Subject: Re: teaching programming to kids - Re: Looking for 8080/Z80 BASIC On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, Chris M wrote: . . . and to supplement or ameliorate deficiencies in the firmware version, there can be addtions to it on the disk! . . . and, for those missing the firmware copy, put "Gee Whiz BASIC" on the disk! C: I somehow sense that you mean supplement deficiencies of the firmware version w/yet more deficiencies on floppy. ?BASIC, despite it's deficiencies, was almost always *there*. If most every computer back in the 80s had firmware PROLOG, I guess I'd be arguing for it. I know I would have been as happy w/ROM based FORTRAN, somewhat less w/Pascal. The major point being it was *there*, and you could do a lot of newbie hacky type stuff with it. Peter Norton illustrated pc innards and stuff w/BASIC. I won't say BASIC facilitated taking baby steps in assembler as well as debug, but you could do it. If ya really wanted to. Granted I could do rudimentary coding in MASM before I knew what a DEG SEG =&Hnnnn was used fer though. But that didn't make me like it any less, and possibly more.