Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 05:14, Jim Brain via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: I defer. I never owned one. I had a ZX Spectrum and longed for a BBC Micro. I think this is part of what irks me. Sinclair tried hard to make the best possible computers it could for a limited budget. The ZX80 and ZX81 were pretty good for their time. The Acorn Atom, for instance, was far superior, but too expensive and only sold in small numbers. I personally never saw the appeal in the VIC-20: it was quite expensive, and 22 columns of text? Come on, you're making fun of me. What use is that? The ZX Spectrum was not an optimal solution -- I read recently that although it sold in the millions and inspired a hundred clones and copies, it never made a profit for Sinclair, whereas the ZX81 was very lucrative. But it had passable graphics, passable sound, a just about passable keyboard, a passable BASIC. It was very expandable; mine ended up with dual 5.24" 780 KB disk drives on a disk interface that also gave me a joystick port, a proprietary network port (!), a Centronics printer port, an NMI button for taking and dumping snapshots of copy-protected games and screenshots thereof and more. And when I bought a newer 128KB Spectrum, all that worked with it as before. In a machine that was ?175 at launch, or about half to a third of the price of an add-on floppy drive for a Commodore or Atari. I think that's a pretty good attempt to hit multiple targets in one go. It was weak in all areas, sure, but it was broadly equally weak whereas it hit a price point other companies hadn't even considered aimed for. Whereas the C64... well, I will quote you out of sequence: That is my _point_ here. Good graphics, for 1982. Great sound, for the early '80s at all. Decent keyboard. Some expansion potential. But not balanced, because of a deeply crappy BASIC. Remember, it was US$595 when it was new; as Wikipedia notes, that's equivalent to $1,576 in 2019. I do not expect a shitty half-assed effort at a BASIC for one and a half thousand bucks! If I spent $1500 on a computer these days, no, I most definitely would not accept that it had, say, 16GB of RAM, a kick-ass 3D card, a ~4GHz octo-core processor... and the OS was installed on a 400GB EIDE drive. You say: [...] I really don't think that counts. 3rd party upgrades or replacements don't signify, because they just lead to market fragmentation. Book publishers wouldn't do books of programming tips for some niche BASIC extension that only 1% of the market has. Magazines wouldn't print tutorials and listings for it. No. It's what's in the box that counts. It was a massive, egregious, outstanding corner that was cut on a fifteen hundred dollar machine, not just a detail to be swept under the rug. And yes, I think it really _did_ set the expectations of millions as to what BASIC was. Certainly when I was a spotty 13YO schoolboy, with friends learning programming, and the Commodore owners were surprised to learn that those of us with Sinclair or Oric machines, or a bit later Amstrads -- you may well have never seen or heard of any of those; look 'em up, they're interesting -- could do stuff like draw shapes and play tunes right in BASIC. It was, as you yourself say, a relatively cheap home/games computer, not a business one. I got that. What I was trying to convey was that, ISTM, it's evidence that Commodore didn't really know to whom it was selling, what those customers wanted, or how to exploit its massive market share. Cluelessness was quite common in the micro industry. Lots of companies promised the Earth, couldn't deliver and died, or delivered late and died, or underdelivered and died, because they didn't understand the market or how to win a place in it. And yet, despite that, there was a profusion of machines. Z80 and 6502 and 6809. MS BASIC and MSX. The big American makes: Atari and Tandy and Apple. The big European makes: Sinclair, Oric, Amstrad. The niche ones: Sord, Spectravideo, Mattel, VTech/Laser, Dick Smith. The little British companies: Dragon, Memotech, Camputers, Jupiter, Elan. So much diversity. But so few of them put the effort into a decent programming language. Not "let us help educate the children because they are our future". No, instead, "screw 'em, they're kids, we just have to bullshit their parents." The long-term result was tarnishing the name of one of the greatest educational languages ever written, and certainly by far the most successful compared to Logo or Smalltalk or anything else. I am not so sure. I don't think a 64KB micro in 1982 was "bare minumum" of anything, TBH. It was a relatively high-end machine for its time. The Sinclairs were bare-minimum low-cost kit. Not Commodore. I had heard that but forgotten about it. I still think it was a bad idea, TBH. But hey, it sold in the millions, so... *shrug* That's an interesting take. I think I have to give you that one. :-D -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053