[ale] [ALE] Happy Birthday BASIC

[Jim Kinney]

Compiled code. Still do FORTRAN when it has to be fast. Still do C if I
need to burn up a monitor (oops!). But you can't learn it if you can't see
it, touch it, and change it. The scripting languages are easier to learn
and definitely have a place. And they are now the gateway to programming.
They're not perfect and they slurp down hardware. I can't imagine python
trying to run in the days of BASIC on an early  pc jr.  :-)

On Thu, May 16, 2024, 8:33 PM jon.maddog.hall--- via Ale <ale at ale.org>
wrote:

> Chuck,
>
> Many people did not recognize the benefit of pulling down the source code
> and typing it in by hand.
>
> "Wow!  What does that error mean?   I typed it in just like....oh...I made
> a mistake!"
>
> You had a syntax error, and BASIC showed it right away (most of the time
> anyway).
>
> But maybe your syntax was correct and your program still did not work.
> Maybe the error was that you meant to type "2" and you typed "3' by
> mistake....a "run-time error".
>
> You do not get to create or fix these problems if all you do is pull
> binaries off the web or load them from a CDROM.
>
> This was EXACTLY why the professors at Cambridge University started the
> Raspberry Pi project.   They realized that the freshmen of today often knew
> less about computers than the freshmen of 20 years ago...the ones who 20
> years ago downloaded source code and (in some cases) even had to COMPILE it
> and LINK it in order to run it.
>
> Happy Birthday, BASIC!
>
> md
>
>
> On 05/08/2024 8:10 AM EDT Chuck Payne via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>
>
> I am surprised that this one didn't get an email. Happy Birthday BASIC, it
> turned 60. It only three years older than me, and has more functions than
> me too.
>
>
> https://www.tomshardware.com/software/programming/the-basic-programming-language-turns-60-dartmouth-basic-started-it-all-in-1964
>
> As a kid, I got into BASIC because it was the way to get games. I forgot
> the name of the magazine, but I would buy it every month and sit at my VIC
> 20, trying the code in, playing such games and Oil, where you drill to get
> oil hoping to hit a pocket with a devil in it. Or trying to understand what
> the data fields were doing.
>
> Since I missed the 4th as well, here some BASIC Code for you guys
>
> https://www.goto10retro.com/p/star-wars-theme-in-basic
>
> Yes, I was one of those kids that would type some weird messages on the
> computers tha would repeat, like
>
> 10 print "Long live ALE, bring more beer"
> 20 goto 10
>
> Happy Computing guys
>
> --
> Terror PUP a.k.a
> Chuck "PUP" Payne
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