Happy Birthday, BASIC

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Happy Birthday to Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, better known everywhere as BASIC. Hard to believe that the basis of the popularity of the computer world as we know it today began 50 years ago. The genius of BASIC wasn’t so much in the language itself, but the inspiration it gave to the future programmers to build upon.
 
So he's the guy that came up with the two worst programming commands... GOTO and GOSUB.

I still say Applesoft BASIC was the best. It's what I started on and to this day still use it on my Apple //c. Apple Pascal sucked so bad... Compiling took forever.
 
Code: 
CLS
PLAY "L4 C8C8DCFE2 P4 C8C8DCGF2 P4"
PLAY "C8C8>C<AFED2 P4 B-8B-8AFGF2"
PRINT "-------------------------------------------------"
PRINT "| Happy                                          "
PRINT "|      50th Birthday                              "
PRINT "|                                                "
PRINT "|    &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;    &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;    &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;   &#9619;    &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;                "
PRINT "|    &#9619;  &#9619;  &#9619;   &#9619;  &#9619;   &#9619;  &#9619;   &#9619;   &#9619;               "
PRINT "|    &#9619;  &#9619;  &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;&#9619;&#9619;  &#9619;      &#9619;  &#9619;                    "
PRINT "|    &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;   &#9619;   &#9619;   &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;   &#9619;  &#9619;                    "
PRINT "|    &#9619;  &#9619;  &#9619;   &#9619;      &#9619;  &#9619;  &#9619;                    "
PRINT "|    &#9619;  &#9619;  &#9619;   &#9619;  &#9619;   &#9619;  &#9619;   &#9619;   &#9619;               "
PRINT "|    &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;   &#9619;   &#9619;   &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;   &#9619;    &#9619;&#9619;&#9619;                "
PRINT "-------------------------------------------------"
PRINT ""
PRINT ""
DO
k$ = INKEY$
PLAY "L4 C8C8DCFE2 P4 C8C8DCGF2 P4"
PLAY "C8C8>C<AFED2 P4 B-8B-8AFGF2"
LOOP UNTIL k$ = CHR$(32)
END
 
acidrain97 said:
So he's the guy that came up with the two worst programming commands... GOTO and GOSUB.

I still say Applesoft BASIC was the best. It's what I started on and to this day still use it on my Apple //c. Apple Pascal sucked so bad... Compiling took forever.
Click to expand...

Give me Turbo Pascal or give me DEATH!!!!
 
acidrain97 said:
So he's the guy that came up with the two worst programming commands... GOTO and GOSUB.
Click to expand...
Both the GOTO command and the concept of GOSUB/RETURN* predate BASIC. :p

I can understand the problem people have with GOTO, at least while there are alternatives, but I don't get why someone would have a problem with GOSUB/RETURN*.

*(cribbed from CALL/RETURN in FORTRAN, and some BASIC versions later adopted that older convention when named labels were added).
 
acidrain97 said:
So he's the guy that came up with the two worst programming commands... GOTO and GOSUB.

I still say Applesoft BASIC was the best. It's what I started on and to this day still use it on my Apple //c. Apple Pascal sucked so bad... Compiling took forever.
Click to expand...

Except on the machine level, GOTO (or jumps) are common. I never got the hate for GOTO. Properly used there is nothing wrong with it. The problem has always been bad programmers, not bad languages.
 
I've been lead to believe that its viewed as 'bad practice' to use goto in a higher level language where it would be safer to use a loop. But as stated, jumps are not only common in assembly they are the basis for the repetition loops in the higher level languages. So its definitely good to know how it works.

If I had to pick things to not like about BASIC it would probably be how arrays aren't really 'arrays' and the lack of language-native pointers and references. Or how some implementations lack proper scoping - I seem to remember one where all variables had global scope :eek:

BASIC can be fun to learn with and even useful as a prototyping tool (theres OOP now in VB), but it certainly has its limitations for being useful in large projects and situations where you need to extract full performance from the hardware.
 
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