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On This Date in 1964, the First BASIC Program

Posted by timothy on Thu May 01, 2008 11:39 AM
from the if-$date->=-2008-then-goto-past dept.
Programming IT Technology
palegray.net notes that on this day in 1964, the first BASIC program was run. From the Wired article:"Mathematicians John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz had been trying to make computing more accessible to their undergraduate students. One problem was that available computing languages like Fortran and Algol were so complex that you really had to be a professional to use them. BASIC is still alive and well these days, from Microsoft's VB.net to cross-platform variants like REALbasic. For the old-school among us, there's always Joshua Bell's Apple II BASIC emulator implemented in Javascript."
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  • HELLO WORLD (Score:5, Funny)

    by QuantumPion (805098) on Thursday May 01 2008, @11:42AM (#23264864)
    The program was:

    10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
    20 GOTO 10

    And it is still running to this day.
  • Programming a VIC-20 in BASIC...and removing all the spaces to save a few bytes. Oh yeah, those were the days! Now we have terabyte drives. The mind boggles.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cheapy (809643)
      The mind boggles! It does nothing!
      • I still have my TI99/4A. Still works too. About 10 years ago, I was even able to load a drafting program I wrote and saved to tape. Wonder what would happen if I tried it now? Has been in unheated/cooled storage unit for most of the last decade. D'oh!

        Looking at the code, have no idea how I wrote that, other than maniacal focus on computer back then. I got into high school in '81 and totally lost interest in computers. Darn you girls! Darn your boobs!

        • Typing in those programs was a pain, but it did help the future programmer:

          • You learned to type (if you couldn't before)
          • You learned to debug. Those listings always had at least one bug, plus the ones you introduced.
          • The tiny fonts ruined your eyes so you could get those cool glasses!
          Well, I'm not so sure about that last one!
          • And when you had to type in the ML listings from RUN magazine, if you screwed up, just start over.......

            Layne

  • BBC Basic! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by QJimbo (779370)

    I learned BBC Basic on old Acorn Archimedies computers, I always found it very intuitive and consistant in it's structure. A great language.

    BBC Basic for Windows is still going too, pretty good product though not really good for anything "serious" in my opinion. But then again, thats Basic for you.

  • Or any variation of so called structured BASIC? Seems like a completely different (set of) language(s) to me, in all but name.
    • Indeed, they were pretty different.

      I remember in high school using qbasic (I think that's what it was) which was structured with procedures, at least. One of my partners wrote the core code, and I had to refactor it to take advantage of the structured part of the language. Of course, we didn't call it "refactoring" back then, we called it "cleaning up this goddam spaghetti."

  • Thank you, bitsavers! (Score:3, Informative)

    by rsclient (112577) on Thursday May 01 2008, @12:13PM (#23265262) Homepage
    You can get one of the (original?) manuals from a Bitsaver mirror site:

    http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf [mirrorservice.org]

    And, their original 'hello world' program does linear algebra (page "9")

  • What BASIC means (Score:4, Informative)

    by thermian (1267986) on Thursday May 01 2008, @12:14PM (#23265274)
    Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

    There, consider yourselves enlightened.
    I found that out from an article in PC format, back in the long ago.

    Also, for the 'it's not a language' crowd, it *was* for those of us who were learning how to program back then. Ok, I wouldn't use it now, but I really enjoyed it in the eighties.

    • Actually, I used Power Basic fairly recently to measure transistor base current as part of a project. It worked nicely with the simple architecture of a 6502 microprocessor where really all you needed was to accept input via a serial port and sampling into a graph (don't ask - there are some really dated pieces of equipment in use in some establishments in the UK, especially where electronics are being taught - I've had instructors who thought Kirchoff's ideas were radical).

      Mind you I had to wire the circu

  • BASIC is still alive and well these days, from Microsoft's VB.net to cross-platform variants like REALbasic.

    ...Or, for those interested in FOSS versions (and more cross-platform to boot), you could try SmallBasic [sourceforge.net].

    I first used it because I couldn't find any other decent interpreters for an ancient Palm, then discovered it supported just about every platform I regularly use (oddly enough, however, no official Mac build exists, though I'd imagine you could get the Linux version to build on OS X).

    And now

  • Dartmouth BASIC (Score:4, Informative)

    by theoddball (665938) <(theoddball) (at) (gmail.com)> on Thursday May 01 2008, @12:29PM (#23265472)
    ...the oldtimers are still keeping the dream alive at (www.dtss.org [dtss.org]. Tom Kurtz and others have coded up emulators for the original system software (DTSS, the Dartmouth Time Sharing System), and the site has a repository of old docs, including the Dartmouth BASIC [wikipedia.org] compiler source [dtss.org] (warning, PDF). There's a trove of historical info [dtss.org] there on the birth of BASIC, too.

    Kemeny [wikipedia.org] himself was largely responsible for the revolution in computing, at least at Dartmouth, and his influence went way beyond developing BASIC. The man went from being a brilliant mathematician and computer scientist to being a brilliant mathematician/CS prof/president of the college. He saw that computing would be ubiquitous -- someday -- and issued every student a network ID. In the mid-70s. There were teletypes all over campus (in the performing arts center, even!) where everyone was invited to log on.

    Sidenote, as related to me by a Dartmouth math/philosophy prof: Kemeny led the school into the era of coeducation, and expanded student enrollment by about a third when women came. Problem was, this put the college way over its housing capacity. So, being who he was, he ran a series of simulations on the mainframe to figure out how to cram 1.3n where there had previously been n students -- staggering schedules, stretching semesters, you name it. The result was the strange/unique Dartmouth program where all sophomores attend for the summer quarter, and are forced off campus/abroad during the "regular" school year. I can't help but admire the guy's approach to the knapsack problem in a different context...
  • Program something in spaghetti code today, and his noodliness will be proud!

    Do your part to help fight global warming!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hey! (33014)
      Well, consider this was 1964, it might have been a computed goto ...

      In any case, this was not a language intended for software developers (like Algol). Nor was it a language intended for scientists (like Fortran). It was intended for CS students. Goto is desirable for demonstrating simple models of computation.

      Dartmouth Basic had if/then, gosub, and for/next loops, which were much less gawdawful than Fortran's Do loops. It had fewer than a dozen functions, but they were well chosen to give students th
  • When I was a wee lad, going to Kiewit during the summer and messing around with DTSS and Basic. They tore the building down a long time ago, which makes me feel even older.

    They had DECwriter LA36's (like was used to print the Lions' book), old-fashioned 110 baud teletypes with paper tape readers and punches, and if you were lucky you could get some time on one of the Tektronix vector terminals. They also had some very odd GE printing terminals whose printing looked a lot better than the DECwriters. I was
  • The real hallmark of early BASICs was relying on line numbers.

    It was a real revelation to see some Amiga BASIC code in a magazine without!

    Then some recent stuff like Batari BASIC which is basically a pre-processor into 6502 ASM showed how closely it maps to ASM - in fact, given that Im surprised compiled BASICs weren't more popular especially on slow home computers back in the day!

    And of course Batari BASIC showed me line #s still weren't important, just fancy labels really.

  • Dijkstra's knock wasn't on BASIC _specifically_ (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith (263124) on Thursday May 01 2008, @05:57PM (#23269234) Homepage
    In the seventies, all the undergraduates whose computer science courses used PASCAL thought themselves to be very superior beings and looked down their noses at any hobbyist hacking away in BASIC. They would usually parrot a distorted echo of Dijkstra's famous rant, which had perhaps been conveyed to them, accurately or inaccurately, by a teaching assistant, and tell you that it was a scientific fact that BASIC rotted your brain.

    So for the record it's worth noting that Dijkstra wasn't ranting against BASIC, specifically. He was ranting against anything that wasn't ALGOL or a derivative thereof, and he was equally harsh about the other major languages of the day:

    "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

    APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

    FORTRAN, 'the infantile disorder', by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.

    In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included.

    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."

    • GOSUB 1960 (Score:4, Informative)

      by Finallyjoined!!! (1158431) on Thursday May 01 2008, @11:52AM (#23264976)
      I'm a little older :-(

      Still, BASIC was the first language I used in CS at school in 1975. Then FORTRAN IV. Fond memories.

      I still have my coveted IBM flowchart template :-) Green plastic in a cardboard sleeve.

      Perhaps I should have stolen the code for the compiler & sold it to hobbyists, who knows I might be rich now......

    • Is that you, Grandpa? =P

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Jeremiah Cornelius (137) *
        I have a Wilkinson saftey razor from 1936. I still accepts today's blades, and comes in a marvelous little leather case, with a heavy brass zipper. It bows the blade when closed, and this creates a shaving angle on the razor edge, similar to modern cartridge razors. I used this, when I have the luxury of time. Most otherwise, I am now a "shower shaver", and the usual Gilette, disposable, pivot-head twin-blade does the trick.

        Breakfast was a bit of a disaster, this morning, I'm afraid to say. There is an
    • Likewise - I was coding in BASIC on PDP's *years* before the Apple II came out. Or the Apple I even...

      Dialup via a 110-baud acoustic coupler on an ASR-33 teletype - now *that's* "old school"!

    • My mom was learning Cobol and Fortran, in 1983 when I was 13, and I definitely remember Fortran not being easy. Nor was Pascal, Cobol, etc.

      BASIC was easy and my friend even wrote a program in BASIC on his Apple IIe to help his dad's business partner keep inventory. I used it to...ummmm...do very interesting things with a Hayes SmartModem and BASIC.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rs232 (849320)
        "My mom was learning Cobol and Fortran, in 1983 when I was 13, and I definitely remember Fortran not being easy. Nor was Pascal, Cobol, etc"

        Pascal was recommended as a teaching language precicely because of it's structure. Some people said that learning to program with BASIC caused untold amount of damage on the psyche, something that some people never recovered from .. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fohat (168135)

        Oh, we're all just so impressed that you're such an uber-geek and so much more intelligent than anyone else here. You're so damned smart we'll all have to just fall on our knees and worship you. Why is it people here feel like they always have to prove they're smarter than everyone else on /.? Are they that insecure that they have to prove themselves?

        The statement "Why is it people here feel like they always have to prove they're smarter than everyone else on /.?" is redundant. You should say it rather like this: "Why is it people on /. feel like they always have to prove they're smarter than everyone else?"

        There, that's better.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella (173770)
      Because it doesn't have "Visual" in front of it. I think you will find the point-and-click functionality is a bit limited...
    • It takes a perverted mind to take that as Microsoft bashing... VB.NET is still very recognizably a BASIC dialect, even if it is far removed from the original roots; but hey, QBasic was a long way there already, if you consider the fact that in the original BASIC, all variables were numbers or array of numbers only, identifiers were restricted to a single letter, and there was only a single form of branching instruction - "IF comparison THEN line-number" (no ELSE, and no AND/OR/NOT operators)...
      • "QBasic was a long way there already"

        There were other Basics, BBC Basic and Sinclair BASIC are two that come to mind. Is Microsoft the same company that remade BOOLEAN as a TRISTATE value, eg TristateUseDefault, TristateTrue, TristateFalse ...

        was: Re:VB .NET is not basic
    • Shields down, please. It wasn't an implied insult. VB.NET still uses BASIC. What does the "B" in "VB" mean, anyway?
    • I agree. Visual Basic .NET has nothing to do with BASIC. Carry on the good fight!

      \rebel without a clue

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by syrinx (106469)
      Um.. I agree that VB.NET is nothing like BASIC, but that's a bad thing.

      Also, "biased".
    • 10 REM Bite your Tongue
      20 PRINT "Bite your tongue, Eander"
      30 IF TONGUE=1 GOTO 60
      40 PRINT "No, really, BASIC is great!"
      50 GOTO 30
      60 PRINT "Now, go create some BASIC code"
      70 END

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bigbutt (65939)
        Crap!

        10 REM Bite your Tongue
        15 LET TONGUE=10

        20 PRINT "Bite your tongue, Eander"
        30 IF TONGUE=1 GOTO 60
        40 PRINT "No, really, BASIC is great!"
        45 TONGUE=TONGUE-1

        50 GOTO 30
        60 PRINT "Now, go create some BASIC code"
        70 END
        Oh yea, I remember BASIC :)

        [John]
        • And this is why you put gaps in your line numbering......

          Said another way: only elite BASIC programmers numbered their lines by one's......at least until the RENUMBER command (some implementations).

          Layne

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by raddan (519638)
      I think there will always be a place for beginner/simple languages, for two reasons:

      * Not everyone wants to be a programmer-- some people just want to get stuff done. I trained a (very hesitant) group of people how to use SQL today; by the end of the session, they were surprised with the expressiveness and simplicity of the language. But it's not a "real" language. It's domain-specific, and that's fine. Same with regexps-- great at one thing; other things would totally suck. But do I really want to
    • "BeOS is a great operating system" -Doug Miller, Microsoft

      What if MicroSoft bought Be and used that as the basis for a new OS?

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