Thread: Anyone else learn old BASIC

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    Its hard... But im here swgh's Avatar
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    Anyone else learn old BASIC

    Just wondering, did anyone else learn this style BASIC when they first started programming?

    Code:
    AUTO
    10 REM program to enter a word
    20 REM coded by Pete
    30 PRINT "Enter a word: "
    40 INPUT A$
    50 ENDPROC
    60 END
    Its the first language I learnt and it got me into programming.
    Double Helix STL

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    Quote Originally Posted by swgh View Post
    Just wondering, did anyone else learn this style BASIC when they first started programming?

    Code:
    AUTO
    10 REM program to enter a word
    20 REM coded by Pete
    30 PRINT "Enter a word: "
    40 INPUT A$
    50 ENDPROC
    60 END
    Its the first language I learnt and it got me into programming.
    Yup, and I did a few fairly large projects in ABC80 Basic and PDP-11 Basic.

    --
    Mats
    Compilers can produce warnings - make the compiler programmers happy: Use them!
    Please don't PM me for help - and no, I don't do help over instant messengers.

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    What about Hansoft 4th:
    Code:
    ." Countdown: " -1 10 do i . space -1 +loop ." Blast Off!!!" cr
    Very cute!

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    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by swgh View Post
    Just wondering, did anyone else learn this style BASIC when they first started programming?

    Code:
    AUTO
    10 REM program to enter a word
    20 REM coded by Pete
    30 PRINT "Enter a word: "
    40 INPUT A$
    50 ENDPROC
    60 END
    Its the first language I learnt and it got me into programming.
    I believe so, yes. Although I don't seem to remember doing any procedural programming like in there. I started with Sinclair BASIC on the ZX Spectrum in the early 80s. Before that I had no idea programming even existed and thought games were made in factories.
    Last edited by Mario F.; 05-15-2008 at 04:44 AM.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

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    and the hat of copycat stevesmithx's Avatar
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    Its the first language I learnt and it got me into programming.
    me too.
    I wonder whether still anybody use it in the corporate world.
    Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted
    - Albert Einstein.


    No programming language is perfect. There is not even a single best language; there are only languages well suited or perhaps poorly suited for particular purposes.
    - Herbert Mayer

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    Quote Originally Posted by stevesmithx View Post
    me too.
    I wonder whether still anybody use it in the corporate world.
    There are still people writing code in Visual Basic, which is a modern version o Basic.

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    Mats
    Compilers can produce warnings - make the compiler programmers happy: Use them!
    Please don't PM me for help - and no, I don't do help over instant messengers.

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    Dr Dipshi++ mike_g's Avatar
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    I used to code in Blitz Basic, which is a fairly recent basic variant. The same prog would be:
    Code:
    ;program to enter a word
    ;coded by Pete
    A$ = input("Enter a word: ")
    That was my first language too.

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    My first language was AppleBasic in high school in 1984-1985. Showed a propensity for programming then, too, helping other people in the class. Teacher gave me a book on Pascal and told me I should learn it, but never did. What an idiot...got degreed in biochemistry and then never worked in that either. I didn't actually start programming as a job until 1996. Where would I be if I'd studied CS right out of high school?

    Oh yeah...probably on a mainframe somewhere writing COBOL!

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    l'Anziano DavidP's Avatar
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    I first learned BASIC in 1998 while in middle school. It was QBasic 7.1.
    My Website

    "Circular logic is good because it is."

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    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    yeah, learned it on the VIC-20. I still use PBASIC, a version of basic for the BASIC Stamp. A lot of business's still use BASIC or COBOL, which is very similar IIRC.
    Last edited by abachler; 05-15-2008 at 07:51 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by abachler View Post
    yeah, learned it on the VIC-20. I still use PBASIC, a version of basic for the BASIC Stamp. A lot of business's still use BASIC or COBOL, which is very similar IIRC.
    Yeah, Cobol is similar to Basic in the same sense as Pascal is similar to C. Basic, Cobol and Fortran are non-Algol languages, whilst, C, Pascal, Modula2,3, Oberon and such are based on Algol.

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    Compilers can produce warnings - make the compiler programmers happy: Use them!
    Please don't PM me for help - and no, I don't do help over instant messengers.

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    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Hmm... I'm not sure I see the similarities. Not with Cobol. If anything it feels closer to Algol.

    Meanwhile Algol itself was borrowed from Fortran. So according to the above, matsp, BASIC could be considered an Algol language. It isn't probably because BASIC started on its own and was a mishmash of Algol and Fortran.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

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    Yes, on a TRS-80 in high school. The teacher was pretty much reading from a manual, and I couldn't have been more bored. I didn't start to like programming until college, when I first used FORTRAN 77 (then Pascal, then C, then COBOL).

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    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    My first language was Pascal. That's the first one I programmed in. I looked into basic ages before that though. It took me a minute to remember what REM was. Is that still the commenter for bat scripts?

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    Its hard... But im here swgh's Avatar
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    Doesnt REM mean REMARK? ( as in comment ) Its been a while
    Double Helix STL

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