50 years of BASIC, the programming language that made computers personal

[Inman]

50 years ago this week–at 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, to be precise, BASIC was first successfully used to run programs on the Dartmouth College’s General Electric computer system. Time magazine has an excellent write-up tracing the history of the language that inspired a generation.

http://time.com/69316/basic/

I first encountered QBasic in school where it was part of the curriculum. Thanks to teachers forcing students to mug up programs without explaining, I failed consistently at programming for 3 years. Things got to the point that the school started considering expelling me due to this. One day I accidentally hit F1 instead of F5 (which compiled the code) and the Help screen opened up changing my life forever. One month later I topped the class in QBasic practical exams, which ironically again made the school consider expelling me as they doubted I cheated in the exams.

Four years later a friend loaned me the book Teach Yourself Visual Basic in 21 Days and suddenly I was in the world of graphical UI. And finally in February of 2011 I read on Reddit about a tool that allows you to develop Android apps in VB like environment. It was called Basic4Android. And the rest as they say is history.

What are your fondest memories of BASIC?

 

[Erel]

I started with basica when I was 7 years old, followed by: GW-Basic -> QBasic -> Visual Basic -> eVB -> VB .Net -> C# -> Basic4ppc -> Java -> Basic4android (as well as some other languages like C, C++, PHP and JavaScript).

The screenshot above is from a program I wrote many years ago...

 

[DonManfred]

My 1st contact to basic was in 1985 with an Commodore C-116

Later, 1987 i switched over to an Atari ST-e with an gigantic harddisc with gigantic 60mb space. It was time to code in GFABASIC

Then i leave the way of basic for a long time (coding php and delphi in meantime). In 2013 i found the way to basic4android after some successless months with eclipse to get an android app running

 

[thedesolatesoul]

I started when my dad got us a 386. We were restricted to using it 1 hour per week, so I wrote and debugged my programs on paper pencil and used to type furiously in my one hour. I wrote my first game of pong, after my dad bought me a basic book off a street hawker. I didnt understand it back then.
Then I read the code for QBasic Nibble and Gorilla and later in Physics learnt about projectile paths, then I learnt to apply physical rules to programming.
The VisualBasic it was always about eye-candy for me, making skinnable apps and weird components. I still do that. I mostly learnt to code by reading other people's code, although I have formal training, it didnt teach me as much as I learnt the hard way.

 

[klaus]

My first steps in programing was a FORTRAN course in the late 60's. The data input was with punched cards. This sounds like stone age today.
My first steps in Basic were in the early 70's on a NOVA 1200 with a teletype as keyboard and display and a punched tape to store the source code. This sounds like middle age today.
Then I owned a Commodore CBM 3032, with a 32 kBytes memory and compact cassettes as a 'mass' storage.
At work I used an HP 9636 with HP Basic, one of the best Basics I used.
Then I owned an Atari ST with GFA Basic (like DonManfred), excellent Basic inspired by HP Basic.
Then PCs with GWBasic, QBasic, VB1 - VB6, VB3 and VB6 were the best VB's
Then eVB
And finaly Basic4PPC and Basic4Android.

 

[HotShoe]

My only real exposure to basic was Cbasic and Sbasic from the CP/M and MP/M days in the late 70's - early 80's. I never did much with either version though. I was concentrating on cobol, fortran, and RPG-2 in college, along with Pascal. I settled on pascal, C, and Assembly until I decided to go with b4a almost 3 years ago.

--- Jem

 

[stevel05]

I bought a Sinclair ZX81 in about 1977 I think, then a Dragon 32 and BBC 'B' which all provided Basic in one form or another, then An Atari ST as much for the music software (Cubase) at the time, and started to program midi related programs in C (which was also much different from the C/C++ nowadays). Then 15 years later, I got a job programming in Basic for the Pick Operating system (relational databases) in a large corporation. I wasn't that good and got promoted out of harms way within 5 years to Project / Security manager. But still love to dabble.

 

[LucaMs]

I'm starting now, because I am much younger than you!

I'm lying

Texas Instruments TI99/4A (NOTE: 4A, the precursor of B4A )

Powerful. An audio cassette player as a mass storage.

Then I moved to Atari 520 ST, but without the hard drive, I was not as rich as Manfred.

Then to an IBM 3742 (lol, search it, it was not mine, unfortunately)

eBasic? I have to search it.

 

[LucaMs]

My first steps in programing was a FORTRAN course in the late 60's. The data input was with punched cards. This sounds like stone age today.

Yes, but then the punched tape was born (or vice-versa?)

 

[JordiCP]

My first one was an Amstrad CPC6128 (I suppose in the early 80's) , with some strange format disks and CP/M. Basic and Assembler. Peeks and pokes for getting directly into memory mapped functions and screen memory, that was fantastic!

Now that I read it, I remember that my first own program was already a spherical world were a projected square could be moved through its surface with the keyboard :O . A friend of mine said it was impossible and of course I spent many days programming in order to win this bet

Later, for work, programmed mainly C and sometimes Assembler for embedded systems, mixed with hardware design. I limited to VB4 and VB6 on the PC side

And many years after, have found B4A which has allowed me to get into this world (and still draw spheres ;-P )

 

[Reviewnow]

QuickVB goes OpenSource thought you all would like this
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vbteam/archive/2014/05/02/quickvb-goes-open-source.aspx

And the Story
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vbteam/archive/2014/05/01/happy-50th-birthday-basic.aspx

 

[JakeBullet70]

Yes, its the Timex Sinclair 1000. Only computer I could afford as I was just married and had 1 child.
(Who now works for Microsoft)

 

[LucaMs]

Can you say to your "baby" that I want to work for Microsoft too?

(I remember ZX Sinclair, not that)

 

[miquel]

Speaking of Sinclair.

I owned SinclairQL with Microdrives

but my first computer was SHARP MZ 100 PC

 

[LucaMs]

You are all stoned old and nostalgic ... including me

 

[JoanRPM]

I started on the 80's with an AIM-65 from Rockwell.

The language was in assembler and has a Basic translator. It has a cassette to record the programs and a slot to expand the hardware. It also had a thermal printer.
My top was make a model of an intelligent elevator (with motors, limit switches, ...) , just a toy.

Those were good times!

 

[eps]

I started with a ZX Spectrum, 48k. Spectrum Basic was excellent! I used to like creating drawing programs or some simple programs moving Sprites around the screen..

Then on to an Atari ST, which was a terrible mistake! I disliked it a lot. TOS Basic or whatever it was, was terrible.

I then moved on to an 8088 processored PC and started to use QuickBasic 4.5 (M$oft!) which rekindled my programming interest.

 

[klaus]

Then on to an Atari ST, which was a terrible mistake! I disliked it a lot. TOS Basic or whatever it was, was terrible.

Unfortunately you missed GFA Basic on it which was an excellent, efficient and powerful Basic.

 

[DonManfred]

Unfortunately you missed GFA Basic on it which was an excellent, efficient and powerful Basic.

Yes. But later in times of Ease and Mag!X (Multitasking) the "IDE" was a pain due to use of Line-A
But all in all it was a great time with Atari and GFA

 

[eps]

Unfortunately you missed GFA Basic on it which was an excellent, efficient and powerful Basic.

Fair enough, but I did enjoy Super Sprint!