BASIC turns 50

[RevEng]

At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall, Professor John Kemeny and a student programmer simultaneously typed RUN on neighboring terminals. When they both got back correct answers to their simple programs, time-sharing and BASIC were born.

 

 

As a salute to the upcoming 50th anniversary of BASIC, I rewrote the first basic program...

 

 

 

10 LET X=(7+8)/3
20 PRINT X
30 END

...in my own 7800basic variant.

 

 displaymode 320A
 set zoneheight 8
 incgraphic atascii.png 320A 
 P0C2=$0F
 characterset atascii
 alphachars ASCII

 x=(7+8)/3
 plotvalue atascii 0 x 2 0 0

main 
 goto main 

 

 

 

Mines a bit longer because the 7800 doesn't have a built-in character set.

 

The famous computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra rallied against the original Dartmouth BASIC. (and any language with GOTO) His opinion was that it ruined programmers. Despite that, Atari BASIC on the A8 was pretty much responsible for my eventual career choice in IT, and sparked a lifelong interest in coding. GOTO didn't ruin me, though I do agree with the arguments against using it in languages with functions.

 

I think it's a darn shame that computers have more or less turned into Internet appliances that don't come with BASIC built-in anymore.

 

Feel free to post your own salute in your chosen BASIC, or share your own personal experiences and antics, or opinions on the language!

[+5-11under]

And the 2nd through 10 millionth program:

 

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"

20 GOTO 10

 

/with apologies. BASIC is awesome!

[Rybags]

They invented Basic, but Timesharing had already been done beforehand. Apparently the concept was thought up in the 50s, Dartmouth supposedly had the first successful commercial implementation.

 

Like many, it's where things started for me. Over 32 years ago now.

 

Started on 6502 Assembly about 18 months later, then other languages a bit after that.

 

Still hard to beat insofar as being able to bang out code quickly and try new ideas and see the results right away.

[+Gemintronic]

I think of GOTO's like video game violence. Grand Theft Auto doesn't cause violence. GOTO's don't cause bad code structure. Bad coding habits cause you to use GOTO's improperly.

[The Usotsuki]

10 ? "Hello, cruel world!"

[+Ripdubski]

Atari Basic is where it all started for me too. It was responsible for altering my career goals from attorney to IT back when I was around 12. Congrats Basic for hanging in there!

[carlsson]

Regarding bad coding practise, I had a friend whose C code was so terrible that I almost looked into the other direction instead of trying to follow his code. But he knew by heart exactly what his programs were doing.

[Rybags]

I never agreed with the whining about GOTO.

If you have a program that's a finite process and does stuff with a bunch of data records, then fine - even with a primitive language you can get away with just loops + subroutines.

In a game, at the very least you usually have a DO / UNTIL <never> condition.

 

In our old clunky Basic on many old computers, it was often the case that you had to put the stuff you wanted to be fast at the start of the program. Not just Atari, but many other systems as well. So at the least, you had at least one unconditional branch at the start.

Edited April 16, 2014 by Rybags