When BASIC was at the top, do you agree?

[TempodiBasic]

Hi wonderful QB64pe community!
The time runs as its nature, and today I'm lucky to get some time to make this thread.

The question is towards any experienced BASIC coder that want to remember old good days.




Is there another gold time for BASIC?

Fine to meet you today QB64's friends.

[bplus]

Hi Tempodi

The gold time is when you type, Print "Hello World!"

[TerryRitchie]

I would say BASIC had its heyday in the late 70's to early 80's because of it being the "operating system" of so many home computers at that time: Apple, Commodore, Pet, TI99/4A, TRS-80, etc..

However, BASIC is what you make of it as a programmer. I was a systems administrator for a local plastics firm from 1994 to 1998 and I used a combination of QuickBasic 4.5, VisualBasic for DOS, and VisualBasic for Windows to write custom software the company used. I was able to interface the software nicely with Novell Netware 2.11 and 3.12 as a network back end using various proprietary libraries available at the time.

My first adventures into microcontrollers was using the Basic Stamp which used a version of BASIC called pBasic.

[PhilOfPerth]

For me, 1981 to 1985 was the Golden Age of personal computing, with first the  ZX81, theZX Specrum, and then the Amstrad CPC range. I cut my teeth on the ZX81, writing my first "programmes" in basic, with a small introduction to machine-code. But after graduating through the Spectrum to the Amstrad, with its faster storage and retrieval, colour, and half-way decent graphics I was able to finally write some useful software.
Compared to todays PCs of course, these were still "toys", but they encouraged and enabled many of todays programmers to go on to bigger and better productions.

[SMcNeill]

Heck, I consider *NOW* to be the current "Golden Age of BASIC".  When, in the past, have we everhad a BASIC as powerful, fast, and versatile as what we have now, here?

[PhilOfPerth]

You're right (of course!), it's way more versatile and powerful than it ever was - even for us "dabblers" who only use 10% of it!

[Kernelpanic]

I have also encountered a type of UR-Basic: Apple-Basic. Variables could have multiple characters, but only the first two were used for assignment. So, "Preis" and "Prämie" were the same name for Apple-Basic, so the result was wrong of course.

The good old times! 

[TempodiBasic]

Hi Tempodi

The gold time is when you type, Print "Hello World!"

Hi Bplus,
Do you say so because the iron time is when you press F5 to run the code and you pray that all go right???   

[TempodiBasic]

I would say BASIC had its heyday in the late 70's to early 80's because of it being the "operating system" of so many home computers at that time: Apple, Commodore, Pet, TI99/4A, TRS-80, etc..

However, BASIC is what you make of it as a programmer. I was a systems administrator for a local plastics firm from 1994 to 1998 and I used a combination of QuickBasic 4.5, VisualBasic for DOS, and VisualBasic for Windows to write custom software the company used. I was able to interface the software nicely with Novell Netware 2.11 and 3.12 as a network back end using various proprietary libraries available at the time.

My first adventures into microcontrollers was using the Basic Stamp which used a version of BASIC called pBasic.

WOW 3 types of BASIC interacting among them for getting industrial production control!

At that time was better MASM or TASM in professional software production?

I'm talking about lowlevel programming task to add fast features to highlevel language ... surely now you play with c/c++ to get these lowlevel features.

[TempodiBasic]

I have also encountered a type of UR-Basic: Apple-Basic. Variables could have multiple characters, but only the first two were used for assignment. So, "Preis" and "Prämie" were the same name for Apple-Basic, so the result was wrong of course.

The good old times! 

Hey Man !
you force me to answer to your music of the good old times....
Mr. Sandman