Thomas E. Kurtz, Co-Inventor of BASIC, Dies At 96 (hackaday.com) 14
Slashdot readers damn_registrars and GFS666 share the news of the passing of Thomas E. Kurtz, co-inventor of the BASIC programming language back in the 1960s. He was 96. Hackaday reports: The origins of BASIC lie in the Dartmouth Timesharing System, like similar timesharing operating systems of the day, designed to allow the resources of a single computer to be shared across many terminals. In this case the computer was at Dartmouth College, and BASIC was designed to be a language with which software could be written by average students who perhaps didn't have a computing background. In the decade that followed it proved ideal for the new microcomputers, and few were the home computers of the era which didn't boot into some form of BASIC interpreter. Kurtz continued his work as a distinguished academic and educator until his retirement in 1993, but throughout he remained as the guiding hand of the language.
No problem! (Score:2)
10 PRINT "I'M ALIVE!"
20 GOTO 10
I expect the man to respawn very soon.
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to make a comment very similar to that. Amazing how that's pretty much everyone's first/most memorable BASIC program.
Re: (Score:2)
He didn't die, he just GOSUB without RETURN.
Re: (Score:2)
off to the great subroutine in the sky
Before I read K&R, I read K&K (Score:2)
10 REM THE GOOD OLD DAYS
20 GOTO 10
My second language (after FORTRAN on the /360) ca. 1972 on HP-2000 TSB.
Thank you and RIP (Score:2)
RIP (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I learned a tiny bit of basic when I was 13 years old or so. It was cool to work with and I liked it. I'm curious how you think it might still be useful - what kinds of things are you thinking people can be doing with it? Does anybody use it for anything currently? what kinds of current-day things would Basic be best for? It would be fun to go back and putter around with it again.
Unfortunately, BASIC does not die with him... (Score:1)
That will take a while longer, if it ever happens. Such an abomination.
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Dude, Trek was written in BASIC! You're pissing all over my youthful memories!
Re: Unfortunately, BASIC does not die with him... (Score:2)
Thankfully, the Trek textmode game that is installed on my Debian box is written in C.
Re: Unfortunately, BASIC does not die with him... (Score:1)
"Does" not die with him? Odd choice of tense. Not a native English speaker, ja?
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You may notice that the title of the story uses the same tense in the same context ...
Don't forget that (Score:2)
We have to thank BASIC for Microsoft. The company's first significant business was implementing BASIC on MITS Altair and any other microcomputer during the later half of the 1970s.