BASIC Computer Language Turns 40

5 REM nam37 codes
10 PRINT "In 1963 two Dartmouth College math professors had a radical"
20 PRINT "idea - create a computer language muscular enough to harness"
30 PRINT "the power of the period's computers, yet simple enough that even"
40 PRINT "the school's janitors could use it."
50 END

missing line

[squarefish]

GOTO 10

A Poem!

[American AC in Paris]

10 PRINT "This is a"
20 PRINT "Haiku program"
30 GOTO 10

They had a dream

[Xel'Naga]

Obviously they failed, and so they created BASIC instead.

And now we have ...

[mcx101]

... BASIC's much acclaimed successor, Visual Basic ;-)

Janitors are programmers too!

[stienman]

yet simple enough that even the school's janitors could use it

And that, children, is where the seeds of garbage collection were sowed.

-Adam

5 REM Testing..

[pirodude]

10 PRINT "I hearby declare..."
20 PRINT "that all comments in this story"
30 PRINT "be typed in basic"
40 END

Re:ahem

[spotteddog]

Obviously their arithmatic algorithm was flawed

Re:ahem

[pete-classic]

It is notoriously easy to create off-by-one bugs in BASIC :-(

-Peter

Obligatory Dijkstra quote

[Kaa]

"Learning BASIC causes permanent brain damage." -- E.Dijkstra

Re:5 REM Testing..

[Anonymous Coward]

10 REM "In that case, they should be comments."
20 END

Re:missing line

[Peridriga]

shouldn't that be:

10 PRINT "First Post"
20 GOTO 10

Re:ahem

[djplurvert]

um, how is the parent offtopic?

In other news, slashdot submitters use a Pentium to calculate important historical dates.

plurvet

Re:I miss the simple life

[nomadic]

ILLEGAL FUNCTION CALL

RE: FP

[Anonymous Coward]

10 PRINT "YOU FAIL IT!"
20 GOTO 10

(note to mods: this is funny; please moderate accordingly)

re: janitors are programmers too!

[ed.han]

was that the impetus for dumpster diving? [j/k]

ed

Nostolgia

[AKAImBatman]

Ok, who remembers the Star Trek game from Dartmouth? You know, the one where you got to enter coordinates to move the ship to, then fire photons and phasers at Klingons? You could even consult the library computer! Failing that, who remembers coding the "trench" game?

| * |
| * |
| * |
| * |
|* |
| |
| |
*BOOM* YOU CRASHED. TRY AGAIN? [Y/N]

Re:ahem

[deck]

10 PRINT "Concived: 1963"
20 PRINT "Born: 1964"
30 END

Re:I miss the simple life

[Anonymous Coward]

Which you obviously didn't do very well. You don't even have a command in that!

I would...

[FrYGuY101]

I would create a witty BASIC code responce, but my mind has shunned all knowledge of BASIC from my head.

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. (Edsger Dijkstra)

Re:I miss the simple life

[castlec]

yeah, i know, i tried to reply to the post, calling myself an idiot. apparently i'm even too stupid to reply to a post :o)

Re:missing line

[CougarCat]

10 print "BASIC? Boy does that ring a..." 20 print CHR$(7) 30 goto 10

Re:5 REM Testing..

[jared_hanson]

System.out.println("10 PRINT \"Hell\"");
System.out.println("GOTO 10");

Re:ahem

[nycsubway]

That is because array indexes start at 1 instead of zero. So it's really 41 years if you start from year one.

Re:They had a dream

[Lane.exe]

But without BASIC would we have QBASIC and that nifty gorilla-banana-chunking program?

Re:They had a dream

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have that.
I have to keep modifying the SPEEDCONST though.

Re:ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than your spelling algorithm.

Re:Edsger Dijkstra? Does not like it

[RinkRat]

Oy, Feeding the Troll, I know.

No, Dijkstra has it right; there are styles one should use and styles one should not. BASIC forces you to use the latter. This must later be beaten out of you if you are to become proficient.

Your seeming moral ambiguity about the styles one can use spring from a personal coping mechanism attemptimg to rationalize your bad habits as valid. They are not.

Or something.

Re:Edsger Dijkstra? Does not like it

[cybermace5]

Hey, I have a great idea! Add an extension to C/C++ so you can put BASIC snippets inline. This would infuriate more than enough people, making it a worthwhile effort.

It feels like elementary school again

[nocomment]

10 ? "CmdrTaco and Kathleen stting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G";
15 ? CHR$(7)
20 goto 10

Re:WHY! WON'T! IT! DIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

WHY! WON'T! IT! DIE!

probably because someone stuck a "goto 10" before the "end"

a BASIC error

[M0nkfish]

10 PRINT "Happy Birthday to you"
11 PRINT "Happy Birthday to you"
12 PRINT "Happy Birthday dear BASIC"
13 END

Dammit... Missed out a line. Now I remember why I should always increment line numbers by 10.

Today we use Bash

[Anonymous Coward]

[biteme@bender biteme]$ x=1; while x=1; do echo "First Post"; done
First Post
First Post
First Post
First Post
First Post
.
.
.
.
.

Re:5 REM Testing..

[Tackhead]

> 10 PRINT "I hearby declare..."
> 20 PRINT "that all comments in this story"
> 30 PRINT "be typed in basic"
> 40 END

1 PRINT "FUCK YOU"<BR>
2 GOTO 1<BR>
3 REM ITS BEEN 20 YEARS SINCE I DID THAT TO A VIC-20<BR>
4 REM AND THEY STILL DONT LET ME IN THAT MALL

EdsgerDijkstra?Does not like it-Take the MONO-Rail

[Anonymous Coward]

"Programming should not be a straitjacket: the more options and the more different ways to do thing, the better."

Spoken like someone who's never had to maintain a lick of code in his life.

"Those who think that there is no place for anything like a GOTO should look at html."

I take that back. Someone who's never coded in his life.

Re:ahem

[silvaran]

10 PRINT "Concived: 1963"
20 PRINT "Born: 1964"
30 END
25 PRINT "Spell checked: Never"
RUN

60 PROFIT!

[dpilot]

Syntax Error "PROFIT!"
-------------------^
Command Not Found "PROFIT"

Maximum Program Length

[c0d3r]

Belive it or not back in the dos 2.x with basica / gwbasic i was writing a chess program and hit the maximum line number. its 32k lines from line number 1 with each line incremented by 1. It simply told me "Out of memory"

Damn!

[alazar]

I miss line numbers and GOTO

Obligatory AYBABTU

[elrick_the_brave]

5 REM AYBABTU NEVERENDING
10 PRINT "In A.D. 2101"
20 PRINT "War was beginning."
30 PRINT "Captain: What happen ?"
40 PRINT "Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb."
50 PRINT "Operator: We get signal."
60 PRINT "Captain: What !"
70 PRINT "Operator: Main screen turn on."
80 PRINT "Captain: It's You !!"
90 PRINT "Cats: How are you gentlemen !!"
100 PRINT "Cats: All your base are belong to us."
110 PRINT "Cats: You are on the way to destruction."
120 PRINT "Captain: What you say !!"
130 PRINT "Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time."
140 PRINT "Cats: HA HA HA HA ...."
150 PRINT "Captain: Take off every 'zig' !!"
160 PRINT "Captain: You know what you doing."
170 PRINT "Captain: Move 'zig'."
180 PRINT "Captain: For great justice."
190 GOTO 5

And lo......

[crivens]

And lo, thousands of people suddenly decided to call themselves excellent programmers!

Re:From the Jargon File

[sonicattack]

It could still be worse... (from the Fortune database):

THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE

SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for
Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus
they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.

Re:missing line

[Triumph The Insult C]

50 IF STORY_SUBMITTED_PREVIOUSLY = 1 THEN GOTO editors
60 END
editors: GOTO 10

Re:WHY! WON'T! IT! DIE!

[linuxtelephony]

Odd, I thought it was because BillG only knew how to write in Basic, so the company had to keep a basic product alive so he could do some programming too.

shouldn't that be...

[Chuck Bucket]

45 IF $ARTICLE="BASIC" GOSUB 60
60 PRINT "COOL! I USED TO PROGRAM ON MY APPLE //e IN APPLE BASIC! I COULD MAKE BAD GRAPHICS AND ASCII ART ALL DAY WITH MY 80 COLUMN EXPANSION CARD!"
70 GOTO 50

CVS

BASIC Sex Ed

[Throtex]

Don't forget to PEEK before you POKE!

Re:A Poem!

[YomikoReadman]

10 PRINT "Not haiku" 20 PRINT "Instead, Senryu" 30 PRINT GOTO 10

Whow...

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know you could insert hyperlinks into BASIC programs... Guess I missed that last update. =P

Re:a BASIC error

[TomV]

how about the 'more structured for no adequate reason' edition?:

10 gosub 60
20 gosub 60
30 print "happy birthday dear BASIC"
40 gosub 60
50 end
60 print "happy birthday to you"
70 return

(tested in MS Office XP VBA, will not work in vb.net as gosub has now gonesub and will not return)

Re:WHY! WON'T! IT! DIE!

[bigberk]

I think Microsoft's BASIC was GW-BASIC, which I was told stands for Gates, William (Bill)

Re:Today we use Bash

[Jorkapp]

At first I was considering having my sig in BASIC:

10 PRINT "Jorkapp is a Programmer"
20 GOTO 10

but it was too - Basic. IMO, my sig in C is more 1337.

Re:A Poem!

[squidfood]

Problem finally solved!...

10 GOTO 30
20 REM ???
30 PRINT "PROFIT!"

Re:A Poem!

[Pieroxy]

On a slightly offtopic note, I think slashcode should allow us to mod down our own posts. I mean, when I'm trolling or flaming, I do it knowingly (most of the time at least). If I could already mod myself down, it would be beneficial so that the moderators are not disturbed by my post. They would save their mod points to mod up interesting content instead of modding down garbage.

1K Adventure

[UdoKeir]

This one used to tie people up for a few minutes...

10 PRINT "You are in a cave."
20 PRINT "Go N, S, E OR W?"
30 INPUT A$
40 GOTO 10

Re:Look at all these posts.

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Here's a clue kiddies
Haiku in English is dumb
Add last line next time

;)

Re:And now we have ...

[nacturation]

I tried Audible Basic, but it wasn't very good. Tactile Basic wasn't too bad, but please... please, for the sake of the children, stay away from Olfactory Basic.

5 REM Jeez

[LS]

10 PRINT "What do programmers who's jobs have been outsourced do during the day?"
20 LINE INPUT A$
30 PRINT "Wrong, they write basic programs and post them to slashdot"
40 END

I'm a janitor!

[njord]

You insensitive clod!

sig

[dustman]

I was trying to figure out where your sig is from.

```si`k``s.H``s.e``s.l``s.l``s.o``s.``s.w``s.o`` s. r`` s.l``s.d``s.!``sri``si``si``si``si``si``si``si``si `ki

I am somewhat into programming language theory, and I have seen the pages of alternative languages... It looks to me like the "Hello World" program in one of the languages that just uses the primitive combinators.

But, what is funny: I paste it into google, and it says:

Did you mean: ```si`ks.H``s.e``s.l``s.l``s.o``ss.w``s.o``s. r`` s.l``s.d``s.!``sri``si``si``si``si``si``si``si``si `ki

Heh... did I mean to use somewhat random-looking string of characters A, or did I really want somewhat random-looking string of characters B?

BASIC? That's too newfangled for me!

[wcrowe]

11 FORMAT(1X,"I'M SO OLD THAT MY")
12 FORMAT(1X,"FIRST PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE")
13 FORMAT(1X,"WAS NOT BASIC")
WRITE(1,11)
WRITE(1,12)
WRITE(1,13)

99 STOP
END

My first BASIC project

[bshroyer]

I was one of four students in a pilot program in 4th grade (1980) wherein we learned BASIC programming (Apple II) and "New Math" (don't even get me started.)

After learning the basics, I started my first project - a random text generator. I wanted to see if, left to its own devices, the Apple II would eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Or at least, produce a few dirty words on its own.

I spent two days coding (never having used a keyboard before, typing was arduous)
The program went like this:

10 A=INT(RND(1)*30) +1
20 REM
30 IF A=1 THEN $B="A"
40 IF A=2 THEN $B="B"
...

340 IF A=30 THEN $B="."
350 PRINT $B;
360 GOTO 10

If I recall, there was no "copy" or "paste" function in the boot ROM AppleII BASIC. Typing this was hell on my 9-year-old fingers.
The good news is, the program worked. The bad news is, after I'd finished it, the teacher showed me how to cut 29 lines out of my program using the $CHR() function. I wanted to shoot him.

All in all, BASIC served me well. It's a great intro programming language for pre-teens.

My favorite basic program...

[Xaroth]

10 POKE RND(9999),RND(9999)
20 GOTO 10

You never knew what it would do! Sometimes nothing, sometimes it'd play music, sometimes it'd draw pictures! It was great!

Re:A Poem!

[Dejitaru Neko]

Pu-ro-gu-ra-mu. Five syllables. :P

Re:missing line

[Anonymous Coward]

10 print "BASIC? Boy does that ring a..." 20 print CHR$(7) 30 goto 10

Ah! The magic "how to get kicked out of a Radio Shack" code!

Re:missing line

[Triumph The Insult C]

only on slashdot would a joke get critiqued like this =)

Re:Obligatory Dijkstra quote

[amRadioHed]

How could Dijkstra _know_ something like this without ever having gotten deep into BASIC himself (thus incurring the brain damage he talks about)?

Dijkstra was very smart. He could easily learn enough VB to destroy 3/4 of his brain and still be savey enought to see how bad it really is.

Stupid computer trick...

[Foo2rama]

Man i forgot about basic.. it is annoying that I can still write in it. 10 rem piss of teacher 20 for x= 1 to 10000 30 if x = 10000 then goto 60 40 next x 50 goto 20 60 ? (apple g) 70 goto 60 in applesoft basic apple g was a beep and ? was shorthand for print. I would write this at the end of class turn off the monitor and sometime during the next class period the computer would start beeping constantle.. wow I am a dork...

Re:Today we use Bash

[cosmo7]

I've never understood why you use a for loop for something like that and not a "while (1)". Can someone clue me in?

while(1) sounds like the Queen talking.

Re:A Poem!

[Pharmboy]

Interestingly, this post is modded up, while another one from two minutes earlier is modded down.

Just goes to show you, like comedy, its all in the timing. ;)

C64

[maggern]

Remembering that me and my brother sometime around 1988 (we were 10 years) typed a program from the manual into our commandore 64. In basic naturally.

The program was pretty long (or at least we felt so) but after a while we were finally finished!

But we couldn't figure out how to start it. We checked the manual like a 100 times, but didn't find any solution. So eventually, we had to turn it off...bummer!

Later we learned that we just should've typed in the command "Run". :-/