When BASIC was at the top, do you agree?

[TempodiBasic]

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.

I appreciate to PC and Qbasic in 1994-1995 when I got my first pc (a grayscale screen notebook) to write my work to graduate... so I found a unknown passion pc and programming... in that year Microsoft was launching win95 and under its DOS. Using interrupts was like a magic to do all that originally Qbasic didn't...

[TempodiBasic]

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?

Hi Steve

your answer make me paint this status of art about QB64pe



what do you think about it?

[mdijkens]

For me BASIC started around 1978; BASIC compiler around 1981 I guess.
But my gold BASIC time was definitely 1987-1992 when building a lot of business systems in MS Prof.Basic Dev. System 7(.1)
Lots of small businesses wanted some basic automations that really boosted productivity.
I remember a chain of garden/outdoor shops wanting to automatically read all cash registers every night (over modems) and totalling them in the central system; it took $20k to implement but it saved them $10k a month in dayly manual labor...
Those were the days that business cases were easy and straightforward without all the imaginary future dream advantages

[euklides]

I started with a Commodore PET 2001 in 1979... 
It was worth a small fortune. 
With on board a little basic (16ko ou 8ko ?) and little booklet to learn the basic language.
What emotion when I saw my first print on the screen, and my first "for x to next" loop ! ...

Many computer after, nowadays I use very oft Visual Basic for Excel Word and Outlook.
And QB64pe allows me to generate EXE programs that I use to fill certain gaps in VBE, such for instance storing information in memory ("_clipboard") and others utilities...
The good old time... yes !!!

[bplus]

Well this topic has me researching the question of: "why we idolize the past?"

[CharlieJV]

Well this topic has me researching the question of: "why we idolize the past?"

(speaking for myself) Nah nah nah, not "idolize the past", but rather reminisce about simpler and fun times when we didn't take things for granted (like mind-blowing 64K of RAM).

Or, as just another "when I was your age" source of stories when cranking on the "old-man-everything-remind-me-of-a-story" shtick ? 

Whatever we call it, there's some interesting/entertaining psychology for sure.

[Pete]

Hey I'm still rooting for the last one on that list, ALGOL, which I assume stands for A LOT of GARBAGE ON LINUX.  

BASIC was high on the list back in the day because every Windows computer came with a copy of QBasic and just about every learning institution, with a  computer science program, made use of it. I actually think MS engineers had their collective hive minds blown when they started seeing programs created with it well above their expectations; so they took a shot at trying to switch coders and instructors over to .NET, which I'm pretty sure stands for NON ESSENTIAL TRASH. Even I have a .NET copy taking up a lot of room in my Recycle Bin.

Pete

- I love BASIC and the SOURCE it rode in on.

[doppler]

I take offense to the use of "WAS".  To me never left the top.  Name one other language as easy to learn as BASIC.  You don't need structured programming.  99 ways to skin that cat (BTW, I love cats).  The only boast to make: To declare your code better was speed and adaptability.

Today it is still the easiest to learn and adapt.  I have used what I learned in basic and used it on other languages.  I have had people come to me and say "I could modify your code, so easy because it reminded me of my playing with basic."

[TerryRitchie]

Hey I'm still rooting for the last one on that list, ALGOL, which I assume stands for A LOT of GARBAGE ON LINUX.  

BASIC was high on the list back in the day because every Windows computer came with a copy of QBasic and just about every learning institution, with a  computer science program, made use of it. I actually think MS engineers had their collective hive minds blown when they started seeing programs created with it well above their expectations; so they took a shot at trying to switch coders and instructors over to .NET, which I'm pretty sure stands for NON ESSENTIAL TRASH. Even I have a .NET copy taking up a lot of room in my Recycle Bin.

Pete

- I love BASIC and the SOURCE it rode in on.

.NET was the beginning of the end for Visual Basic for Windows. Version 6 was the last version of Visual Basic that was usable. Microsoft did the world a disservice by not including a Visual Basic lite version with Windows 95 and above. But then again, you can't have well educated Windows users now can you.

[Pete]

@TerryRitchie
I think I learned more here about using QB64 with Windows API through adding libraries than I ever would have learned by sticking with the sheep herders of Microsoft. I have a lot of fun with my SCREEN 0 bits, but I really loved the Windows GUI presentations. Now PowerBASIC did a really good job of making a language that could pull off some pretty neat Windows effects, but the language surly wasn't "BASIC." PowerBASIC for DOS was an excellent BASIC language but QB64 is better and was worth the wait.

@doppler
+1 for your post. Oh, not concerning your comments about BASIC, about cats. I love cats too!

Pete

- Cats have 9-lives and eat cat food. I have one life and eat my wife's cooking. That puts the odds of my cats outliving me at about 900:1.