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Memories !!
1 posted on 05/01/2004 10:22:15 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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IBM's 'dinosaur' turns 40
2 posted on 05/01/2004 10:23:25 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States - and war is what they got!!!!)
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To: *tech_index; RadioAstronomer
fyi
3 posted on 05/01/2004 10:24:09 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States - and war is what they got!!!!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
10 PRINT "JOHN F. KERRY IS NOT FIT TO BE PRESIDENT"
20 GOTO 10

}:-)4
4 posted on 05/01/2004 10:29:22 AM PDT by Moose4 (Those who serve--thank you. May you find us worthy of the sacrifices you make.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Hee hee!
5 posted on 05/01/2004 10:30:13 AM PDT by martin_fierro (A v v n c v l v s M a x i m v s)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Memories !!

How true. In another life, back in the late 60s, I taught math. There was a local GE plant that let us hook into the GE/Dartmouth time-sharing network with ASR 35s, shown below, where my students did a lot of BASIC programming.

ASR 35 Teletype (1968)

6 posted on 05/01/2004 10:33:57 AM PDT by pt17
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To: Rose in RoseBear
ping, for the memories...
8 posted on 05/01/2004 10:38:57 AM PDT by Bear_in_RoseBear (Comics ain't just for kids anymore)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Ah, the memories. I remember writing programs in BASIC on my old Commodore Vic 20 (hooked up to a 12-inch black and white TV, and a tape recorder to save programs).


9 posted on 05/01/2004 10:41:59 AM PDT by saquin
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To: Fedora
This is cool! I share a birthday with a really ancient programming language!
14 posted on 05/01/2004 10:52:07 AM PDT by JenB
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Paul Vick, a senior developer at Microsoft, said his company owes much to BASIC>>>

Yes, starting with most Windows source code.
22 posted on 05/01/2004 11:04:51 AM PDT by Ronly Bonly Jones
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Great memories, in fact. Prior to there being significant inexpensive software to license for a home computer I wrote a check book balancing program in BASICA. My wife played with it a bit and that helped her later as she wrote SAS programs in grad school. I never had to use it on the job though. Maybe that's why my memories are fond.
26 posted on 05/01/2004 11:11:55 AM PDT by jimfree (Oblivious is as oblivious does.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Memories !!

Gee, I didn't realize that BASIC was THAT old.
My introduction to programming languages began in '71 with keypunching FORTRAN IV (w/ WATFOR AND WATFIV), COBOL and IBM 370 Assembly Language. I didn't stumble across BASIC until '75 or '76, and remember thinking it was nothing but an anemic (albeit easier), watered down version of FORTRAN.

27 posted on 05/01/2004 11:13:21 AM PDT by Willie Green (Go Pat Go!!!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
I'm afraid we dinosaurs will be extincted soon. Kids today don't know or appreciate real programming. Interview one and ask: "What programming languages do you know?" If you get the answer "All of them", you've found your candidate. Programming is an art. Just because someone takes a VB class in school and can operate any one of our great point and click 4GL development environments (Visual C++, Delphi, etc.) doesn't make him a programmer. Let's talk technical. (from an old Digital perspective).

I don't have anyone to talk dirty with anymore. boo hoo.

36 posted on 05/01/2004 11:37:52 AM PDT by kdot
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Makes me feel old having my first computer experience writing programs in a BASIC predecessor, FORTRAN, entering my programs and data on punch cards
37 posted on 05/01/2004 11:42:43 AM PDT by The Great RJ
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
The original version of BASIC may have been designed 40 years ago, but how many people (even among those who program some variant of BASIC) know Dartmouth BASIC?

When did the first variants appear that regarded strings as a natural type (rather than an array) and allowed for multiple statements on a line (including following an IF/THEN)?

On a related note, did Darmouth basic start out supporting the "MAT" keyword, or was that a later enhancement?

38 posted on 05/01/2004 11:47:48 AM PDT by supercat (Why is it that the more "gun safety" laws are passed, the less safe my guns seem?)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Memories !!

I was a late-comer. Didn't start using BASIC until 1970 on a college computer. A couple years later I really appreciated the simplicity of BASIC when I started doing Octal machine language programming on a PDP-8. One thing that sucked was saving your code on paper tape rolls and tieing it with a rubber band. Still got a few rolls laying around here. Then when I got my Apple-II in '77 I was amazed at the expanded repertoir of BASIC commands over that of the college system that cost 100 times as much.

40 posted on 05/01/2004 11:55:07 AM PDT by roadcat
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
No way I thought it was that old. I remember learning it on Apple II-somethings as a 3rd grader back in the mid-80's.
41 posted on 05/01/2004 12:00:12 PM PDT by July 4th (You need to click "Abstimmen")
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To: rdb3
ping for the old guys
53 posted on 05/01/2004 12:30:34 PM PDT by Jalapeno
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Am I the only one who misses BASIC?

I wrote very useful and much used programs in the 70s and early 80s to solve engineering, surveying and astronomic reduction programs that I could still use today if there was a modern version of the language.
The only thing I can find that comes close to the Cadillac of BASIC languages, HP BASIC, is Liberty Basic, which has been "fancied up" almost to uselessness for all but hard core programmers.

The beauty of BASIC was that literally anyone with a semi-competent mastery of math could write a program to do pretty much anything.
With the advance into 32-bit programming and with the gross advance in computer speeds, a modern BASIC would be a killer application.

Where is the modern Bill Gates?

54 posted on 05/01/2004 12:31:27 PM PDT by Publius6961 (.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Ah, the Radio Shack TRS-80 (aka "Trash-80").

Here's an interesting site:

http://oldcomputers.net

55 posted on 05/01/2004 12:34:23 PM PDT by Jalapeno
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Learned Fortran in 62.After then I hire computer experts.
66 posted on 05/01/2004 1:25:53 PM PDT by larryjohnson (USAF(Ret))
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