Did you learn Basic?

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Reader RBalin gifts this article about someone who probably impact more lives than even Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Thomas Kurtz, Co-Creator of Computer
[See the full post at: Did you learn Basic?]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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jrp2706, jburk07, CindyPgh, SueW, David F, Will Fastie, TechTango, Kevin

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Yep. For sure. I guess that makes me really old.

--Joe

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It was Fortran and Minitab on punch cards and later BASIC on timeshare teletype.

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Yes, I did and wrote many programs working for a bank.
I was the first and only one that used a IBM Compatible PC at that time.

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I learned BASIC with a $7 book from Radio Shack and no computer. I just did the exercises in the book on paper because I couldn’t afford a computer.

Later on, I enrolled in a computer programming programme and learned BASIC and several other programming languages.  We programmed BASIC on Tandy Radio Shack Model One computers.  I had a leg up on the rest of the students since I already knew some BASIC.

Then when I got a job, I had to learn Commodore BASIC ,which was different from the Radio Shack BASIC.

Those were the days!

Mark

 

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Punch cards first. Then Fortran with Watfor. Then Basic.
Didn’t get into programming heavy until DBase and FoxBase Pro – writing and compiling programs used for routine maintenance of equipment and TurnAround planning/parts ordering/cost tracking in the Chemical Plant where I worked.

Long time ago. [Sigh]

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In ’73, on a timeshare mainframe using a teletype.  Wrote a number of programs to evaluate performance of different reagents used in the phosphate flotation process.  The storage method was 5-baud paper tape.

My first PC was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (’80/’81?), and I wrote a household budget program/checkbook balancer.  Storage was audio cassette tape using a cassette recorder that utilized a microphone remote on/off switch for read/write.  Backup was just making a duplicate tape.

I wrote the program on paper, defining variables and calculation routines, then programmed it into the TI.  Worked great until the motherboard went belly-up.  It was interesting to be able to listen to my Basic code by playing it back through the speaker.

 

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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SkipH

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In ’66 did my first programing via teletype and paper tape with special adding machine to create the holes in the paper tape. Direct 4 bit binary coding. My first program was one that rounded numbers off and took me 1.5 hours to write and 35 milliseconds to run.

I think Assembly was next. Then came Fortran and IBM 360 with punch cards. I can’t remember if was Basic or Cobol that was next. I got tired of learning a new language to do basically the same thing which back in those days seem to come out every few months and each claiming to be more like regular English and easy to learn; but was just more code words to learn how and what they do.

Today I stick with DOS, PowerShell, and VB for the limited “programing” I do.

HTH, Dana:))

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Sad news. Started with basic on c64 approx in early 80’s. Then on to amiga basic…. And then pc’s – basic and visual basic version 1 to 5 on early windows versions on 386 sx 25’s and 486 66 dx2’s. used to love programming and basic was my starting point. to be fair, i owe this guy a beer for inventing a language which got me into i.t. As a career.

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Like several others learned on Teletype and time-share system.
Progressed to Basic on my TRS80 Model I.
Then CBasic on an Osbourne I.
Next up, MSBasic on IBM PC.
Don’t even want to list all the other languages I’ve programmed in…
Currently PowerShell it is!

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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I got a Commodore PET in the 70’s I think. Tried very simple Basic programs. In ’78 i sat on a beach in the Vendee in France and coded a 6502 machine code fighter aircraft game.. it was brilliant. Unfortunately, nobody else thought so.
Not discouraged I coded an osmosis simulation in machine code. It was stolen and presented as someone else’s. Never been so proud!

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Like several others, it was on a Teletype connected to GE’s time-share system, in 1970. I was in 12th grade, and also attending a local Vo-Tech school for electronics. The GE time-share BASIC was made available to the HS students, and while I signed up for it, not many others did. I had enormous fun, and near the end of the year in ’71, the HS principal told me that _I_ ran up the largest bill for access time. That made my day, and ten years later a 33-year career working in IT as a manager in a state transportation agency.

 

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They taught BASIC as a ‘Computer Course’ for credits at community college in the ‘80’s. Very  interesting. They had students create a wee program. Oh to go back to simpler times!

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1971 – K&K (Dartmouth) BASIC, time-share, at university; I became an instructor teaching it.

1979 – MS-BASIC, TRS-80 Model II, writing custom business apps.

1981 – IBM BASIC, IBM PC 5150 (we all know where that version came from). Once MS-DOS appeared, MS-BASIC replaced IBM BASIC.

BASIC used during my time in the press (I tried many other variants):

• 1983 – TrueBASIC, the descendant of Dartmouth BASIC written by K&K themselves and still available today.
• 1985 – Microsoft QuickBASIC
• 1987 – Borland Turbo Basic (acquired from Robert Zale, developer of BASIC/Z for CP/M)

1983 – Borland Turbo Pascal, mentioned here because it sucked the air out of BASIC. I used it instead of BASIC until the advent of Windows. Turbo Pascal eventually became Delphi, still available today from Embarcadero.

1991 – Microsoft Visual Basic. Although I had every version from 1.0 on, I used it professionally starting with 3.0 and continuing through 6.0.

2002 – Microsoft VB.NET. Not used professionally, but to write numerous personal utilities I still use today. I did not actively use it until v5.

~2007 – ceased using BASIC after 36 years, although I have Visual Studio Community 2022 installed to support my VB.NET utilities.

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I did BASIC pretty much all the years I was programming.  I started in my first computing on an HP-2000 in 1979, and did various forms of BASIC on other computers, ranging from a Commodore 64 to a PDP-11 (including teaching as a graduate student) during my college years.

In my first job out of college, I was working with Alpha BASIC on an AlphaMicro AM-1000, and where all the application software on that system was written in BASIC.  When my employer moved to a UNIX-based system that we got from a VAR (c 1990), all of those applications were done in UX-BASIC.  By that time, I had drifted more into sysadmin work than coding, and I didn’t really interact with the code much, but I had access to everything, and knew how to read it.

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At university we were taught Comp Sci 101 on an interpreted flavor of Fortran, then onto Fortran itself.  Didn’t get into Basic until the 8080 micros started appearing and in those days Byte and PC Mag had Basic program listings you could type into your system’s Basic.

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My first exposure to BASIC was on an Atari 800 I received as a Christmas gift in 1979. I fondly remember creating (very) rudimentary programs and spending countless hours typing in programs from computer magazines and trying to understand (with only partial success) what each line did.

I didn’t stick with programming. Sometimes I wish I had. But that early experience put me on a path to an IT career, for which I am grateful.

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Steve

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I started with BASIC on the little hobby computers, then got a Columbia Data Products portable pc that came with MS-DOS and BASIC.

When I got my first job I started my career with a higher level database managment language, but the most productive part my career was programming in BASIC. General accounting, inventory, order processing, shipping/receiving, manufacturing floor applications, and more.

The companies I did work for eventually transitioned to the “all Microsoft” environment at about the same time I was approaching retirement and moved to different accounting software. I developed in BASIC through 2016 which is fairly recent. (At least it was then. )

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I got my start in programming as a teenager in 1977 in Tom Pittman’s Tiny BASIC. My father had an OSI Challenger, a 6502-based microcomputer that predated even the Commodore PET, much less the IBM PC. He also had a full-sized teletype with a paper tape reader and punch as its main I/O device. I wrote programs like a simplistic tank battle game and a bowling scorekeeper, among other things. I then went on to program in pure 6502 machine code (Dad didn’t have an assembler). I wrote things like a memory tester, an execution tracer, and even a device driver for a high-speed paper tape reader that Dad got later on. That driver was necessary because he had gotten a full-featured Microsoft BASIC interpreter on paper tape. It took forever to load from the teletype’s reader; once I got the driver going, it could be loaded a lot faster. He later got it on ROM chips, eliminating the need to load it. It was very similar to the versions that came with the Commodore PET and the Apple II.

I don’t remember all the programs I wrote for the newer BASIC. I may have written the bowling scorekeeper for it instead of Tiny BASIC; I’m not sure. I only remember it was a tangled mess of spaghetti code that I had trouble getting to work. Anyway, I became fascinated with BASIC’s inner workings and how I could extend its functionality with machine code. I spent hours disassembling and studying its code, long before I knew such things were frowned on. I remember writing a routine that could restore the data pointer to the beginning of a specific line number. All BASIC had was a RESTORE command that set it back to the beginning. I also made use of how it handled string internals to generate 1000 random 10-character strings, using PEEK and POKE to completely avoid lengthy garbage collection delays. This was to test a fast machine-code sort routine I had come across in one of the computer magazines Dad subscribed to.

Programming was more fun back in those days. Those old computers gave me a degree of control that’s impossible to achieve with Windows.

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wavy

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Oh yes. Wandering around the Science and Engineering Laboratory at U. of Illinois-Chicago {Circle} in 1977, I discovered a room with hermaphrodite devices having a typewriter keyboard and a monitor screen.
“How do I get to use those?” Learned there was a procedure to register for a free account, even if you were not taking a class which required one.
Those devices ran HP-2000F Timeshare Basic.
I was subscribed to Creative Computing magazine, and had ordered David Ahl’s “101 Computer Games” book. I put a few of those games up on my account.
The most interesting program I installed was one which let you vote for your favorite program of the week on the system. Answering the question: A “Star Trek” designed game was usually at or near the top of the survey.
So I knew Basic. When I relocated to southern California in February 1981, I was looking for a job in data processing. (I had been hired as a mainframe programmer [COBOL] after graduating from UICC.)
But when looking at “Help Wanted” ads in this field, I noticed a quizzical addition to some corporations’ ‘requirements‘: Persons with two years experience on IBM Basic.
In 1981, if there were any real persons with two years experience coding of IBM Basic, they were not going to leave their position at IBM to work for less money at your corporation. So you had better consider me, even if my experience is not IBM Basic.
I was finally hired to work for McDonnell Douglas Automation Company (MCAUTO). But my programming there was not in anybody’s Basic. It was minicomputers.

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In ’68 I was working for an Italian company, Olivetti  Corp., who had recently bought the old Underwood typewriters and calculators company. They introduced me to a simple desktop computer, the Programma 101, and asked me to market it. It was not a company success, but it excited me to join General Electric’s computer division in ’69 where I learned Basic and later taught GE customers to code. I never did much else with it since I moved on to Fortran and then into management roles. But those were interesting and fun times and I’ve always had a soft spot for Basic.

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