Programming language BASIC is 60 years old

boing
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I started out with BASIC & Z80 assembly (and Fortan 4 & COBOL (on punch cards!)), then switched to C in the 1990s. At first the power of C felt liberating.

A couple years ago I realized I needed a compiled, portable language suitable for quickly throwing together small programs, and finally settled on good old BASIC, so that I can crank out quick-n-dirty utility programs without needing to manage every tiny detail within the program.

The simplicity of old-school, pre-VB BASIC is liberating, too… at least for small, simple programs.

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Staying in during break in jr hi to punch code into the green-screen apple ii… also the real reason I liked my graphing calculator in highschool.

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The structure, and the lack of a SLEEP statement…

fox tv GIF by Bob's Burgers

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Not to mention that if ‘years’ isn’t 60 to start it will never end. :frowning:

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Wow, sorry it came across that way. My comment was intended as light-hearted sys admin humor, nothing more. I certainly had no intention of “programming language shaming” or anything… (but I still hate how difficult JRE issues made actually running Java code)

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Good catch! Comment added to program to clarify the nature of ‘years’.

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I spent a year one summer as an intern at NCR Corporation writing COBOL compiler test programs. (One example: an 1100-line program that tested 88-level entries.) Valuable experience, but not my most favorite summer. :flushed:

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Whoa! That’s pretty cool. IRX/ITX systems perchance?

I worked for a manufacturer which was one of three or four installations in Canada using NCR minis, and the only one running their IMCS II software. :slight_smile:

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This was 1980, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. I don’t remember the system model, but it may have been an 8200- or 8400-series machine. I seem to recall that it was running an IMOS version (III? V?).

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I started with them around 1985, we had an 8400 IMOS to start, moved up to an IRX machine, 8500 series I think, upgraded the OS to ITX, then swapped that for a 9300 and a 9400 IP. Those were unix boxes with an ITX shell. :slight_smile:

You’re the first person I’ve come across who knew anything at all about any of this. :+1:

Presses my nostalgia buttons.

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& save often

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and even java is ancient now. like a grandfather or great grandfather or more depending on where you work.

a friend just blew my mind saying his team can code in whatever mainstream language they want and it just gets merged or something.

crazy.

i started on pc-logo then ti-82 calculators. first job of career was assembler, unless you count temping as a tape operator :rofl:

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Kind of my point… :woman_shrugging:

I Mean You Know GIF by The Voice

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ha because you are a sysadmin. DBA’s hate it too. I think it’s a pretty cool artistic language. probably my favorite that I’ve used. there are a lot of memes about all coding languages and they are all true :rofl:

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Same here - the only other person I’ve met in the past 44 years was someone who I worked with that summer who applied for a faculty position here in the mid 1980s (maybe 1985 or 1986?). Of course, it’s possible that’s because nobody else is willing to admit having worked there… :thinking:

Lots of fond memories, like the time my entire department was moved (“temporarily”) into the cafeteria…

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