The Birth of.... BASIC!

The first version BASIC language was released on 1 May 1964. Initially, BASIC concentrated on supporting straightforward mathematical work, with matrix ...
Click to expand...
and 2024 makes it 60 years old - 5 more years to retirement . . . .(in many places).
 
I watched the video before. A good documentary about the history of a great programming language.
 
Many say BASIC is dead. What a mistake! BASIC actually made it a long time ago.
It all started with ALGOL, FORTRAN and COBOL. And the programmers were already divided into camps. Everyone swore by their own programming language. No wonder, the three languages mentioned above had also been developed more or less for specific areas of programming.
What is also very remarkable is the TIMESHARING principle at Dartmouth, which was basically nothing more than a client-server structure.

ALGOL60 was then a very good standard, from which PASCAL emerged and later DELPHI. And these languages also had substantial problems, such as the processing of strings under PASCAL (actually a disaster). At some point, nobody understood FORTRAN any more.

But BASIC also emerged from it. If we now take a look at our sourcecodes? Which language do we use? The B4 - applications are certainly not "pure BASIC" (whatever that is supposed to be). But they are a very advanced version, with a designer, compiler and structured, object-orientated programming. It's actually the best variant I know, because with B4X it's even cross-platform.

Who needs more (and who still needs cryptic C++? ;))
I ❤️ B4X
 
Last edited:
BlueVision said:
Many say BASIC is dead. What a mistake! BASIC actually made it a long time ago.
It all started with ALGOL, FORTRAN and COBOL. And the programmers were already divided into camps. Everyone swore by their own programming language. No wonder, the three languages mentioned above had also been developed more or less for specific areas of programming.
What is also very remarkable is the TIMESHARING principle at Dartmouth, which was basically nothing more than a client-server structure.

ALGOL60 was then a very good standard, from which PASCAL emerged and later DELPHI. And these languages also had substantial problems, such as the processing of strings under PASCAL (actually a disaster). At some point, nobody understood FORTRAN any more.

But BASIC also emerged from it. If we now take a look at our sourcecodes? Which language do we use? The B4 - applications are certainly not "pure BASIC" (whatever that is supposed to be). But they are a very advanced version, with a designer, compiler and structured, object-orientated programming. It's actually the best variant I know, because with B4X it's even cross-platform.

Who needs more (and who still needs cryptic C++? ;))
I ❤️ B4X
Click to expand...
" It's actually the best variant I know, because with B4X it's even cross-platform"
BlueVision said:
It's actually the best variant I know, because with B4X it's even cross-platform.
Click to expand...
EXACTLY!
Don't know the rest of that programming "stuff", never wanted to.
THIS (B4X) is where I belong. It makes so much sense, easy to comprehend, works (99.9 percent) flawlessly, and could not write ONE line of code without it.

"Who needs more (and who still needs cryptic C++?"

Say no more....
 
BlueVision said:
Many say BASIC is dead. What a mistake! BASIC actually made it a long time ago.
It all started with ALGOL, FORTRAN and COBOL. And the programmers were already divided into camps. Everyone swore by their own programming language. No wonder, the three languages mentioned above had also been developed more or less for specific areas of programming.
What is also very remarkable is the TIMESHARING principle at Dartmouth, which was basically nothing more than a client-server structure.

ALGOL60 was then a very good standard, from which PASCAL emerged and later DELPHI. And these languages also had substantial problems, such as the processing of strings under PASCAL (actually a disaster). At some point, nobody understood FORTRAN any more.

But BASIC also emerged from it. If we now take a look at our sourcecodes? Which language do we use? The B4 - applications are certainly not "pure BASIC" (whatever that is supposed to be). But they are a very advanced version, with a designer, compiler and structured, object-orientated programming. It's actually the best variant I know, because with B4X it's even cross-platform.

Who needs more (and who still needs cryptic C++? ;))
I ❤️ B4X
Click to expand...

I learned BASIC in the 70's. BASIC was a friend of mine. B4X, you are not BASIC.

Okay, the B has its origins in word BASIC, due to some general similarity in look and feel to Visual BASIC, but VB also is/was not BASIC, any more than Ada is ALGOL, or humans are Australopithecus. There is an ancestral relationship, but you have to look deep to find traces of the original in the modern. Let's see... the optional "Dim". A few syntactic or semantic conventions, perhaps. Not much else.

The original BASIC had more of the smell of a simplified FORTRAN:

05 HOME : TEXT : REM Fibonacci numbers
10 LET MAX = 5000
20 LET X = 1 : LET Y = 1
30 IF (X > MAX) GOTO 100
40 PRINT X
50 X = X + Y
60 IF (Y > MAX) GOTO 100
70 PRINT Y
80 Y = X + Y
90 GOTO 30
100 END

Lines 50 and 80 would be at home within B4X, but the rest is more like a modern English speaker trying to read Chaucer.
 
A sequence is missing at the end of the report, dedicated to CableGuy and his famous "Going back to BASICs!!!"
 
copanut said:
I learned BASIC in the 70's. BASIC was a friend of mine. B4X, you are not BASIC.
Click to expand...
For me, the feeling is the same. It's evolution, add some things, remove other things...

Nobody would think of comparing a Lamborghini 350GT from the mid-1960s with a Lamborghini Huracan today.
But perhaps there would never have been a Huracan without the 350GT...

Back in the 80s, I found it very tedious to port a programme for a ZX Spectrum to a C64. The problem was simply a certain "trickery" in many programmes (Peek & Poke), where the operating system was interfered with in order to achieve certain goals and then this no longer worked with a different computer base.
The small programme you show above is an exception to this, it should run on any computer with minor changes, even today. The fundamental difference is that your programme was definitely written for an interpreter version (line numbers). VB then took the step towards structured programming and the "GOTO" so reviled by many was no longer necessary.

I agree with what you say, but time doesn't stand still, everything evolves. All the better if someone still remembers it.
 
emexes said:
VB being VAX BASIC, right?
Click to expand...
Now again, I don't know if I don't see the twist in your sentence and perhaps it's meant ironically... (I need to take another trip to the UK, my English is getting a bit rusty).
Either way, I mean Visual Basic from Microsoft, not VAX. But Emexes, good point, the VAX from DEC was a great machine, I think it was the successor to the PDP-11? I've never seen a VAX, but at least once I saw a CRAY...
 
BlueVision said:
perhaps it's meant ironically
Click to expand...

I suspected you meant Visual Basic ? but knew from using VAX BASIC mid-eighties that structured BASIC predated Visual Basic, and I thought it was interesting that you were even more right than usual if VB was misinterpreted.

Visual Basic was born of Embedded Basic, which was born of QB4, which already had structured programming.

We actually used VB 1.0 to implement a system on a Novell network running Windows 3 clients, and it was an amazing step forwards for implementing GUI programs, but the base language itself was effectively the same as "VB7" (Microsoft BASIC PDS 7.1 VBX.EXE) that we'd already been using.
 
I am absolutely with you.
I assumed that most BASIC programmers would sooner or later end up using MS VISUAL BASIC.
Then we now have to define what is meant by structured programming... ?
 
I once wrote a "Basic" compiler and interpreter - in FORTRAN IV
 
Post #12 by emexes mentioned VB 1.0. I replied that I had used VB 1.0 just a week ago, adding that I received a Book8088 for Christmas and was enjoying retro programming. I follow this thread daily, and for a couple of days my reply was visible. Today, I read this thread and my reply is missing. Further, the numbering sequence (#12, #13, etc.) is unbroken. It is as if my reply never existed. How is this even possible?
 
dlfallen said:
How is this even possible?
Click to expand...
This site's coding is probably not BASIC... :rolleyes:

You mean 8086's little handicapped brother? Don't get angry, just post again...

Speaking of little disabled brother. I have to say, I loved the MOS 6502, it didn't even have 16 bit index registers, but 2x8 bit registers, which made it cheap but also a bit slower. And that on an Atari 800XL, later 130XE. The built-in interpreter BASIC was very powerful. The TURBO-BASIC by Frank Ostrowski left nothing to be desired, there was even a compiler for it, which brought another 20-30% speed. That brings us back to the compiler.
But the 8088 (@Erel: developed in Haifa, Israel) and 8068 were already a different world, as was Motorola 68000. 16 bit real...
 
JackKirk said:
I once wrote a "Basic" compiler and interpreter - in FORTRAN IV
Click to expand...
Very interesting!
How did you do this in principle? The point is to translate an interpreter programme into an independently running programme. In my imagination, the interpreter programme is then broken down line by line into its components and replaced by a kind of "construction kit routine" in assembler? Just curious...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top