Has Basic ever been any use?

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration
-Dijkstra

>>62292298
Hahah le xd le quote, if this was reddit you would be getting big upvotes but I'm sorry it isn't.

I want arguments, not retarded quotes (even if they're from a genius such as Dijkstra)

>>62292255
basic is practical for quickly peeking and poking at memory i guess

>>62292352
Could you elaborate?

>>62292374
commodore basic was so bad, you needed to poke and peek at memory just to get anything done

this quickly taught people how memory worked and could eventually lead to them understanding asm better

>>62292352
Aahhh the way you cheated in ZX Spectrum games by poking stuff

>>62292255
Lmao when you space your lines by tens so you aren't FUCKED by having to go back and insert.

>>62292400
pretty much how cheated in every game made in basic

>>62292394
Is that a mechanism similiar to accessing memory addresses in C or Assembly?

>>62292298
Spoken like a true fucktard.

Basic is good to learn the basic of things.
Specially modern basic that support things like functions and not having to number every line etc..

>>62292407
What are those tens in the code exactly?

>>62292419
Everyone who uses quotes because he's too stupid to word concepts by himself isn't even worth (You)ing.

There are fucking studies about why people who like quotes are more stupid.

>>62292432
Did you have to number them or did code editors already have the numbers?

>>62292457
there was no code editor on most old computers

you had the basic interpreter and that's it

Why the fuck would people in the 70s or 80s use this shit if they already had C which could do everything better?

I mean, Basic also looks harder to write code in, despite being less efficient

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>>62292255
My first programming was in basic. I made this back in the 90s on my friends dads apple ][ and he recently discovered it and sent me a pic. Awww memories. Actually, we first started out with these cool cards where you type out the code and execute it, we didn't understand what we were typing, it all looked like goboldygook to me, but when you run it (after finding all the typos), it would end up being a game or animation. Anyone remember those game cards?

>>62292462
Like the python interpreter? You wrote the shit and it ran it? How did you save code?

>>62292434
Basic organized the code by the number of the line you typed.
You could do your code with
1
2
3.. etc
but if you needed to insert a line between those lines, you were FUCKED, so instead you did 10,20,30 etc so you could come with a 11,12.. etc in case of need to insert.

>>62292434
Every line begins with a number. The program goes from line number to line number, if it hits a GOTO 156, it will jump to line 156 and keep going.

So if you number your lines 1,2,3,4,5 and decide you need to add a line after 2, you're screwed. You need to renumber the entire rest of the program. So instead you go 10,20,30,40,50 and have ten lines of room to insert anywhere you want.

>>62292480
I had to learn basic for a programming class in highschool, because "It would teach the basics I needed to know to learn modern languages like C++"

No, it was utter trash and literally killed my interest in programming until I started taking some C++ courses in college.

Fuck basic

>>62292488
Basic also had unnumbered code execution.
To save the program you generally did something like save"program.bas"

>>62292480
>they already had C which could do everything better?
most people didn't and it would've been unpractical even if they did have it

the only game i know of that was written in a high level language was wizardry and that's only because it's a RPG so it doesn't need to do 60 FPS arcade-like action

>>62292488
i guess it's like a python interpreter

C64 basic had a SAVE command that would save whatever was in memory to a floppy disk or cassette

>>62292491
Woah, that's fucking fucked up hahaha

I'm thinking of all the poor guys who had to insert 11 lines between one and another cursing like hell

>>62292516
In this case you just put a goto (or gosub if feeling fancy) to somewhere else in the code.

>>62292484
Nostalgic and cute. Would be nice to see that running

>>62292491
Really? There was no labels or anything even? How the fuck was this still being used for so long?

>>62292546
you could comment your code though

>>62292533
That's when the whole GOTO debate started I guess?

And could you do something like

10 Print "First Line"
30 print "third line"
20 print "second line"

Would lines be printed in order?

Simple programs look like python

Complex programs look like spaghetti hell

I'm glad I never had to learn this shit

>>62292555
Can't you do that in like every language?

>>62292480
most computers had basic built into them

meaning that you would turn on the computer, and you would immediately be sent to BASIC, way simpler than using C, at least for very small programs

>>62292484
What do you mean by cards?

>>62292546
It came with the computer.
>>62292557
nope.
It would memorize it as
10 PRINT "First Line"
20 PRINT "third line"
30 PRINT "second line"

Actually, that was quite useful to make several almost identical lines, because you could just write a line, press enter, then go up, change the number and parts that change and press enter again and again and again, and it would register as several different lines.

>>62292624
I mean, what would the code I initially wrote display?
Could you write lines in a random order but ordering them via numbers?

>>62292484
I fucking remember those cards!
There were also those old magazines with tutorials about BASIC coding, we didn't really understand much and would just tweak some code until it worked, we were code monkeys back then hahah

Nice to see youngsters interested in our old programming languages anyway, it brings back memories

>>62292620
A piece of cardboard with some artwork on it, and a number of lines of code. You had to type out the code to see what it did. We couldn't fully read yet. I was in grade 2 or 3. It was like instead of getting a disk, you were given a card with the code to run on your computer.

>>62292676
That's awesome! At least back then they gave you the code for everything and you wouldn't just run shitty executables without knowing what they did

>>62292671
great memories

>>62292676
Yeah we could basically (unintended pun) code before we could read

>>62292255
It allowed an inexperienced person to actually write simple programs and gave people with more experience an option to write quick and dirty program that would still get what they want done.

Some BASIC Italian nostalgia:

docmanhattan dot blogspot dot it/2013/07/commodore-computer-club-rivista.html
(Sorry having to censor it like this or spam filter would not let me post)
It's fun because BASIC actually made programming something every kid did back then! Even my sisters who aren't really tech savvy would tweak with that code and try to display stuff on our C64

BASIC was marketed as the language that would make programmers obsolete because "anybody could do it".

Obviously it didn't hold up to such lofty ambitions. But it WAS used for simple in-house commercial apps.

If you want to see a truly worthless language, check out LOGO

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>>62292785
Doc Manhattan has the best nostalgia articles about 80s pop culture.
Among the BASIC ones this is the one that always kills me:
http://docmanhattan dot blogspot dot it/2010/07/scuola-con-il-computer-sorridendo.html?m=1

>>62292641
It would display as you wrote.
But then when you listed the code (with list generally), it would display it by the number order.

>>62292298
why the fat spy in Witcher 3 knows about programming?

>>62292411
yeah sort of but there was no virtual memory so you had access to the full to system memory. It had basic, well, BASIC commands but nothing that we'd call a system libraries now. If you wanted to do anything besides basic operations (print, read, etc) you have to peak (read) and poke (write) to specific memory locations. Literally setting bits in memory to get the machine to do things. Want to change the text color? poke. Want to change the bg color? another poke.

>>62292800
BWAHAHAHAHA LOGO!
The article I just posted here: >>62292828
Also talks about that, the author says the book his mother gifted him for his birthday (a book explaining "gombiuders" to the poor italian kids) was a fucking LOGO shill, and while LOGO had the potential of making even a retard like he was able of doing cute drawings, he was already attending a LOGO course from a lady that was also smoking hot so he could care less about that book's author's opinion.

>>62292828
Those clothes.
God, you're bringkng back memories, young one.

BASIC may seem shitty by now but it was the Java of our generation in some way.

>>62292800
Wasn't it kinda like Java in it's intentions?

>>62292870
It was actually the operating system in many cases.

>>62292800
What was so shitty about LOGO?

>>62292255
I believe BASIC was used for real commercial applications on many late-70s/early-80s minicomputers. e.g. PDP-11 running RSTS.

>>62292888
well java runs in the JVM so it is sorta an OS. As much of an OS as there was in the 80's anyways

>>62292896
Isn't there some list of programs made in Basic?

God I'm loving this nostalgia thread. Best thread in a long while here.

>>62292888
So would the basic interpreter basically be the only thing mediating between you and the CPU?

>>62292927
Yes.

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Anyone had this too?

>>62292927
Also it was the place from where you launched your programs, operated the disk drive/cassete, did bootloading stuff etc..

>>62292883
Sort of. There was a BASIC port for EVERYTHING and it had no system type calls, so BASIC code could be ported from architecture to architecture with little change, as long as there was an interpreter available. But where Java DOES compile into a compressed machine-readable format, BASIC was originally just an REPL language

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>>62292937
We had this in Italy.

Back when they gave you the code instead of shitty CD roms.

They would also give you cassettes sometimes and we would copy them and sell them to less tech savvy friends. Woaaah memorieees

>>62292893
It did literally nothing but screen output as you used language features to draw shapes with a fucking turtle

>>62292948
What's the real difference? I mean, doesn't the .class file of Java have a REPL-like behavior too during runtime?

Anyway I think another similarity eith Java is, making coding a new level easier and accessible to less skilled users. My wife who's a literature graduate now does Java programs for a living, but she couldn't into C with system calls, memory management and all that shit.

>>62292988
Okay I was reading the Wikipedia page and it was dumb as hell

>>62292323
holy shit this cringe

Wow a BASIC nostalgia thread

Let's do these more often

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>>62292937
I had this

>>62292994
Java has type safety, utilizes protected memory, optimized code reordering, libraries, kernel interfaces, and garbage collection, and the JRE is basically a JIT compiler.

BASIC was basically a program that parsed a script.

>>62292484
We used to type in ML programs in hex from "Run" magazine. Some were pretty good.

>>62292988
What's the point of that?

How come it had shills?

>>62292546
>>Really? There was no labels or anything even?
There were in some dialects.

>>62293085
What about Python? What differentiates it from BASIC?

>>62292298
So that's what happened...

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Pic related

It's fun cause back then we would say our parents we needed the C64 "for studying", while all we did was playing rudimental videogames lol

I fucking weared off mine playing a shitty port of PacMan

>>62292488
You wrote it down and typed it in later
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type-in_program

>>62293196
No one ever actually studied (at least not the school things) on a Commodore 64

What about SmallTalk?
Was it actually good?

And Pascal?

>>62293199
No pain no game (literally)

>>62293094
LOGO was a Lisp dialect, and to 80s programmers, Lisp programmers were the Crossfit Chads that never shut the fuck up about Crossfit

>>62293032
Ah yes, back in the days when 3 out of 4 programmers were women.

>>62293232
I haven't used Smalltalk but it was reflective, which during it's time was extremely impressive. It was also OOP at a time when C++ wasn't an industry standard yet. Unfortunately it never grew beyond a curio language.

Pascal, on the other hand, enjoyed a lot of time as a major production language. It was originally marketed as a "teaching language", almost an anti-thesis of BASIC in terms of it being a simple language that also promoted good programming practice. The OOP extension, Object Pascal, flourished for some time under Delphi, which competed with VB for RAD dominance in the late 90s.

>>62293310
It's fun cause in the 70s and 80s a lot of women would learn BASIC and program.
When did it become a men only thing?

>>62293321
So was Pascal better than BASIC in BASICally everything? How did it compare to C?

>>62293344
Pascal was FAST, way faster than BASIC. But it was still abstracted via interpretation, and would never compete with a compiled language like C

>>62292988
In italian it was even more cringe: it had commands translated in italian (only language ever to do that) and you would fucking type SULAPENNA or GIULAPENNA

>>62293344
>>62293361
FYI there is still not high-level language with such deep support that can compete with C in speed

>>62293373
So my uncle was right when saying Pascal was so good

>>62293330
I wonder that too. I remember that our coding teacher in middle school was a woman too. And man it was a hot one.

This thread show how fucking old we are

>>62293437
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

This is an interesting theory. Basically in those years a lot of adult programmers were women, but the young girls stopped coding after a while since pop culture started depicting computers as a men's thing, and here we are.

>>62293310
http://fourtwonine.com/2014/10/22/5334-how-marketing-in-the-80s-killed-computer-science-for-women/

>>62293478
I think it was because computers were used back then as a tool for calculations, but once the personal computer came out and its possibilities known, men became more interested in the computers themselves. If you know what i mean.

I wonder how a modern basic computer would be.

BASIC was originally designed as a teaching language. The majority of programming that was done when it came out was in assembly. So BASIC tried to emulate the jmp (jump) statement with goto. In assembly pretty much all branching and looping is done with the jmp statement which went to real hardware addresses instead of line numbers like BASIC.

Its a travesty that BASIC got used as the default shell language for personal computers in the 70s and 80s when they could have used Forth or APL interpreters

>>62293478
>>62293541
Not even worth the worry

>>62293478
I think this is part of the truth
When computers were first entering the workplace, they were mostly used for accounting and recordkeeping, which were two of the mainstream avenues women used to enter the workforce at the time. Most systems engineers were still men, with a few notable exceptions like Judy Estrin.

In the 70s, PC's started to become a reality and computing left the workforce and became a hobbyist activity. Scientific American, Popular Mechanics and other high-profile magazines targeted at the educated male reader started running advertisements for kits.

Suddenly, as others in the thread have noted, computers became a male endeavor. The USE of computers, however, STILL TO THIS DAY maintains a female majority. I know you guys don't like anything remotely SJW'ish, but it makes you think.

>>62294809
The truth is not SJWish.
Everyone knows that there's a huge army of solitaire playing receptionists over the world.

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>>62292846
underated bost

>>62294809
Programming at it's inception was essentially data entry for physicists and mathematicians. It later became a much more independent engineering-style career which isn't something women have ever gravitated towards, even in countries where gender neutrality is sacrosanct.

Marketing probably does move things around the margins a bit, ads wouldn't sell if they never worked, but the "marketing creates gender roles," is nothing more than biblical creationism for biology-deniers. The evolutionary pressures that created gendered preferences and abilities for various sorts of productive activity are thousands of years old.

I envy people who actually got to program dos stuff

>>62292255
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitz_BASIC

>>62295453
Freebasic is a lot better than those two.
Besides the obvious "it's free as GNU humping", it just supports a bunch of shit, even Open GL, SDL etc..

>>62293372
>>62292988
>>62293094
>thinking Logo is useless
>not reading Computer Science Logo Style

>>62293478
>young girls stopped coding after a while since pop culture started depicting computers as a men's thing
Sounds like fake news.

>>62295506
FreeBASIC is kind of dead, as the maintainer admitted. Blitz stuff is libre.

>>62295807
This is sad.

>>62292298
Arrogance in computer science is measured in picodijkstra.

>>62293125
Iktf, anon.

>tfw: Basic fanboys/fangirls/fantrans still exist..

Ughhhh
t.dos fanboy

>>62293855
Raspberry Pi - PI stands for Python Interpretator, IIRC

>>62297546
Where did you get that?

>>62297675
here
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2657

>>62292255
I started in the 8-bit era.

BASIC was essentially useless. As soon as you wanted to write something fast (and you did, with a 0.89MHz processor) or big, like a simple game, you simply ran out of chuff and had to write in in assembler.

It teaches bad coding habits and it's essentially useless, but it was fucking awesome fun.

It was designed as a toy language but then they realized it even kinda worked

>>62292255
I first used BASIC in 1980 on a zx80.

There has NEVER been anything like this for children in the history of the world - a thing that would take instruction and do exactly what you said, fast as lightning. So I wrote:

10 print "anon is king"
20 goto 10

And that's when I learned about carriage returns. I was hooked, and have bought up a family on what started a career. Toy it may now be, but it wasn't a meme

>>62292893
>>62293094
>>62293372
It was designed to teach kids

look into red and rebol if you want to see a logo influenced language that can be used for something besides turtles

>>62293169
>muh golden boy

>>62293246
I thought the expression was "no pain no gain"

>>62292255
What do INVERSE and NORMAL commands do?

>>62298119
Swap the text from White on Black to Black on White and back again.

Inverting the character bitmap, basically.

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>>62292255
>So I wonder, did BASIC have dynamic memory management like C?
Microsoft Basic from the 1970's had garbage collection. You could end up in a situation where the 1 MHz processor spent a few minutes collecting garbage, so yes.

>Could it be used in professional scenarios?
Yes. I was in a project where we used a BBC Model B, programmed in BBC Basic and 6502 assembly. Very comfy. We were paid so clearly we lost our amateur status, hence we were professional.

>And was it used by some important software developers?
Sure. We wanted to be paid, it was important to us.

>>62292480
basic was built into most computers back then like how we have windows.

You had to buy compilers back then, there wasn't a wide range of open source software, compiling took forever and you needed special hardware sometimes.

>>62292255
It really depends on which BASIC you're talking about. Basic was just the most practical solution back then like how we think of python and javascript. Sometimes its lacking because it was built for a certain computer that could only do so many things.

There were no functions and you had to use GOTO because the interpreter had to be programmed small enough (a few KB) because there wasn't enough RAM.

It was like an easier to use Assembler which was the only other option.

There are still modern versions of basic that have the same capabilities of languages like C/C++ java and probably easier to use.

>>62300000
Fucking quints
>Kournikova
Damn, she didn't age well

>>62292255
It was a toy language. It was interpreted. The BASIC interpreter was a program stored in some ROM chip. This program had to parse the commands you have typed and do the actual stuff, which is slower than executing a compiled program.
Believe it or not at that time there were no compilers for the meme microprocessors. Everything pro was done in assembly.