BASIC computer language turns 40

The Salt Lake Tribune ^ | April 30, 2004 | J.M. Hirsch The Associated Press

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

On May 1, 1964, the BASIC computer programing language was born and for the first time computers were taken out of the lab and brought into the community.
    Forty years later pure BASIC -- Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code -- has all but disappeared, but its legacy lives on.
    "This is the birth of personal computing," said Arthur Luehrmann, a former Dartmouth physics professor who is writing a book about BASIC's development at the university. "It was personal computing before people knew what personal computing was."
    Paul Vick, a senior developer at Microsoft, said his company owes much to BASIC, the software giant's first product. Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office suite still use a descendent called Visual Basic.
    BASIC was born in an age when computers were large, expensive and the exclusive province of scientists, many of whom were forced to buy research time on the nation's handful of machines.
    Dartmouth math professors Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny envisioned something better, an unprecedented system that would give their entire school -- from the faculty to the food service staff -- simultaneous access to a computer.
    Using existing technology called time sharing, the pair created a primitive network to allow multiple users to share a single computer through terminals scattered around campus.
    With the help of students, Kurtz and Kemeny developed a commonsense language to run the system, relying on basic equations and commands, such as PRINT, LIST and SAVE.

John McGeachie, then a student, was there at 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, when BASIC came to life in the basement of Dartmouth's College Hall. Two terminals hooked up to a single computer ran two different programs.
    "I don't think anybody knew how it would end up catching on," said McGeachie, now 61 and a software designer. "It was just enormously exciting for us as students to be working on something so many people said couldn't be done."
    Within a short time nearly everyone at Dartmouth -- a humanities-based college -- had some BASIC experience. And it wasn't long before the business community took notice.
    Kurtz said that by 1970 nearly 100 companies used BASIC systems to share and sell time on computers. And when computers eventually entered the consumer market, most used BASIC.
    The popularity of BASIC waned as computers got more sophisticated, and newer languages were developed to take advantage of the power. Many of those languages, including the Internet's Java, have their roots in BASIC.

[pt17]

However, if you put a bend into the cards at about column 10, they would come flying out, miss the little metal tab that caught them and made them fall in the hopper, and continue flying to the side into the adjoining trash can

LOL. I can't remember doing that one!

[Professional Engineer]

Thanks. I've trying to reply all morning. A dead keyboard is a horrible way to be silenced!

[Professional Engineer]

A VIC-20 was the first computer I owned. I was glad to be able to get $40 for it when I upgraded!

[AlexW]

As a ham radio operator. I did a lot of RTTY (radio teletype) on high frequency radio, back in the 60s.
I even had teletype chat with stations in USSR.
One popular activity was teletype art, where an image was made from the various characters. The "file" would be stored on punch tape and sent out over the air.
It could take an hour to send the image that would take up as much as two feet of paper. (80 baud)
Some were really quite good. My favorite was the one of a sexy gal sitting on a stool.

My machine was an old Teletype model 19. It had a tape punch
and reader.

Those were fun days.

[Nowhere Man]

One thing I must admit surprises me in retrospect is how much better certain things like cassette tape data formats could have been engineered. It might be fun to try to see how much better I could do things today (for use with the old hardware), though I'm not sure what the point would be.

I know, I'd like to drag out my Apple //e and/or my TI-99/4A and give it a shot today and write some programs again, especially since I still play and run role playing games today, having a computer would make it easier. I ought to google down some BASIC interpreters for the PC I have now, maybe I could do the same thing on this 1998 Pentium II, 266 MHz machine that is my current computer.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ROFL!

Clever, bypassing the quiz.

[supercat]

That constant is likely to overflow the integer size on most BASIC interpreters. The most you could get away with would be 32767.

Many microcomputer BASICs used floating-point numbers that could count to 16,777,216 (32-bit) or 4,294,967,296 (40-bit) with to-the-unit accuracy.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Not me!

My paper tape experience was with main frames.

Debugging paper tape reading programs with paper tape supplied by telephone switching equipment recording toll calls for purposes of billing customers . What a pain!

[Ichneumon]

Many microcomputer BASICs used floating-point numbers that could count to 16,777,216 (32-bit) or 4,294,967,296 (40-bit) with to-the-unit accuracy.

Yeah, I realized that after I had posted. But the thought of using a floating point variable as a loop counter has always made me shudder.

[Elsie]

I still know a lot of the numerical opcodes for the 6502. I don't imagine I'll ever need that information again :-).

Never say never.....

Has anyone in this thread written any HARDWARE drivers to be used on a WINDOWS machine??

[FourPeas]

Happy Birthday BASIC! Wow, you're OLD. Of course, so am I. :)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Right, I was no longer a kid when this happened.

[StevieB]

Memories !!

Memories indeed. My first BASIC program was written in 1970, time-sharing on a GE635 at one of the Hanford (WA) nuclear facilities. Basic procedure was to first write your code on paper, and then punch it onto paper tape. Only then did you go online and connect to the system, and load the program. This saved connect time on initial entry. Once online you could debug and alter. The final step was to create another paper tape with the final version of the program.

I've still got the old listings and tapes buried somewhere in the storage boxes. May need to pull them out for the anniversary party.

[StevieB]

I wrote BASIC programs on punched paper tape, and FORTRAN and Algol programs on punch cards.

One of the few people who remember Algol. One of the true pioneer languages whose structure lives on in C and Java. The recursive capabilities in Algol -- on second generation (i.e., pre-IC) computers -- made bill of materials drilldown program easy (or at least easier!).

[Mitchell]

Algol was a great language -- it had blocks and structured programming constructs very early (late 1950s or early 1960s). And, as you say, recursion. I'd only programmed in FORTRAN and BASIC before I learned ALGOL, and ALGOL was clearly superior. Programming language support for data structures other than arrays was the next big step after it.

LISP is another great language of the same vintage, around 1960. I did a lot of LISP programming at one point too (early 1980s, I guess).

[supercat]

LISP is another great language of the same vintage...

Lots Incredibly Silly Parentheses?

And is it related to LITHP, a language ethpethially well thuited to protheththing lithtth?

[Nowhere Man]

Using the computer to generate NPCs is handy! I never tried Morrow Project but I'm looking up a link on it now--sounds fun! What issue of Dragon has the article on the D&D/GW crossover? I have a bunch of issues from about the 70s-100s plus Best Of 2-4; used to have earlier ones back to the 40s, but I don't seem to have those anymore, though I keep feeling like I should have them around buried somewhere. I did a little Star Frontiers when it first came out but not much. I always thought Top Secret looked interesting. Other ones I've enjoyed are Marvel Superheroes and Call of Cthulhu. I also like wargames, though I've only scratched the surface of that with Axis and Allies, Panzer Blitz, basic stuff like that. On the video rpg side I really like Neverwinter Nights.

I just got the issue out, it is Volume XVII (17), No. 2, the Jully 1992 edition. It has pictures of "giant space whales" with cities strapped to their backs which is set in the "Spelljammer" universe. There is an excellent article on where technology and magic meet and some tips on how to take technology into an AD&D world or vice versa. Also a good articles on ideas on how to use UFO's in your campaigns, it is like a nutshell of the various conspiracy theories and ideas on how to use them in any campaign from AD&D to Top Secret to Twilight: 2000 and so on.

There is another game that was made by the Twilight: 2000 people, "Dark Conspiracy," that is sort of like a cross between "X-Files" and "Rollerball" on steroids where your characters basically fight monsters and demons that have come to our universe from another dimension. I'm into the Morrow Project too where you characters are frozen so you can wake up after a nuclear war (or some other catastrophe) to rebuild the US and Canada, I was always fascinated by that genre.

Computer games, I like the Final Fantasy games for my Playstation and Diablo/Diablo II for the PC.

[Fedora]

Sounds cool! I don't have that issue, but I did find some articles in #74 and #80. I also found in issue #76 there's an index of old computer articles from previous issues--here are the listings:

--D&D meets the electronic age: #26, p. 26

--The DM's right-hand man: #36, p. 42

--Computer games have a long way to go: #63, p. 62

--DM's Personnel Service: #74, p. 42

--Also see "Electric Eye, The" computer column, which lists: #33, p. 50; #36, p. 62; #38, p. 52; #39, p. 40; #40, p. 46; #41, p. 44; #42, p. 42; #43, p. 70; #44, p.86; #45, p. 56; #46, p. 70; #47, p. 70; #49, p. 76; #50, p. 70; #51, p. 62; #53, p. 66; #54, p. 74; #55, p. 48; #57, p. 72; #63, p. 65

[rintense]

10 PRINT "FLIP FLOP"
20 GOTO 10

[rintense]

Learned my BASIC on a Trash 80 in 9th grade.