BASIC

Intro

I'm Peter and this is the RoguePlanetoid Podcast where you will find insights about Microsoft or related platforms and technology, along with so much more whether you are beginner or an experienced professional or just interested in technology. Keep Current, Keep Coding!

Welcome

Welcome to episode thirty-six of the RoguePlanetoid Podcast about BASIC. BASIC or Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code was an introduction to the world of programming for many developers like me. BASIC was first created in 1964 at Dartmouth College in the United States and was used to create console-style applications thar used line numbers and simple commands, such as 10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD” and 20 GOTO 10, which would result in an infinite loop of hello world being output to the screen. BASIC would begin my journey of programming and creativity when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s.

Back to BASIC

Thinking back to BASIC is to return to the beginning of a journey as a software developer, which began with a few small steps which later led to giant leaps of creating BASIC that was less basic but more complex instead. My first experience with BASIC probably would have been with the VIC-20 in the late 80s which was an 8-bit computer, old for the time in school, which eventually led me to getting a Commodore 64 in 1991 with the Terminator 2 Judgement Day Edition, as computer games were of interest to me with having already got a Nintendo NES with R.O.B and Zapper, and my C64 would at first seem to just be another way of playing games.

However, upon switching on the Commodore 64 you were greeted with a dark blue screen with light blue text saying ready and a blinking cursor, here you could type the commands to load a game from a tape cassette, mostly used for music at the time, or from a cartridge like the Nintendo NES. My Commodore 64 came with a printed manual which described many more things that were possible than loading your next game, which was Commodore BASIC created by Microsoft, which I decided to give a go from a few lines to trying out examples from the manual.

GW-BASIC

It would be in more recent years I found that so much more was possible on the Commodore 64 than I'd realised with Commodore BASIC, but it was not too much of a problem, as not long after getting a C64 a computer that was rescued from being thrown out was brought home and not long after got curious and decided to give it a go. It was a Toshiba T-1200 laptop, almost sounding like another character from the Terminator movies, it had ten times the memory of the Commodore 64 with 640 kilobytes of RAM, negligible today but plenty back then, which ran MS DOS 3.30, and with the computer came GW-BASIC and a spiral bound full reference manual plus a few example applications I could refer to, these and GW-BASIC itself came on 720 kilobyte 3.5 inch or 7cm floppy disks, more recognisable today as the save icon that weren't even the 1.44MB disks of later computers.

GW-BASIC was one of the defining versions of BASIC, it was a bridge between the early BASIC of the like on the Commodore 64 and the languages that followed, and it was using GW-BASIC where I created more complex and sophisticated programmes, which included simple applications and games including taking advantage of sound and primitive graphics along with character-based layouts. GW-BASIC supported control flow and the ability to write code and get immediate output and it was not just for beginners as many line-of-business applications were written using GW-BASIC.

GW-BASIC applications that I created were simple, along with adventure style games with simple storylines where I even created ASCII-based artwork that I printed off, but it was a solo programming experience as I didn't know anyone else doing it and didn't know of magazines or books in those pre-world wide web days, you only knew if you knew about these things or met or knew someone who did, however the upside was trial and error and having to figure out things on my own which helped develop the problem solving skills that would help later in my career as a software developer.

Conclusion

BASIC was a great way to get started in programming from the Commodore 64 where I followed and created examples to the relatively more sophisticated small applications and games, that I was able to create with GW-BASIC, from studying the manual and referring to example code. Although I did have a relatively later start to programming even then starting from around ten which would be considered even later by today's standards, it was probably as early as I could as didn't know or see anyone else programming around me until much later.

Without that Commodore 64 and rescued Toshiba T-1200 laptop, I'm not sure how I would have started with programming as it wouldn't be until I was in high school and in my later teens when that was an option, so gained an extra half decade of experience that I wouldn't have got otherwise. BASIC encouraged experimentation and lowered the barrier so even with just a manual and no resources, websites and other tools to help, it was possible to get started with programming by just by typing commands at that blinking prompt for BASIC.

Outro

Thanks for listening to the RoguePlanetoid Podcast where each episode you will find insights about Microsoft or related platforms and technology, along with so much more wherever you listen to your podcasts or at rogueplanetoid.com/podcasts for the RoguePlanetoid Podcast whether you are a beginner or an experienced professional or just interested in technology. Keep Current, Keep Coding!