I was definitely a Commodore kid, and BASIC was my first language. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I still like BASIC for hobby stuff.
I remember typing in BASIC programs from printed magazines. That’s how I got my start.
I recall my dad bought a book with VIC 20 games printed. And you bet I typed them all in. And then had to debug them.
It wasn’t this one but it was very similar: https://archive.org/details/games-for-your-vic-20/page/28/mode/1up
And this book came with the computer and taught me how to code: https://archive.org/details/VIC-20_An_Introduction_to_BASIC_Part_1/mode/1up
Such fun memories. And now I’m CEO of a software company haha.
Thanks, BASIC, for teaching me so much I had to later unlearn in order to not be a garbage programmer.
The first time I tried another programming language, I was confused as to how to write code without using GOTO.
I learned TI BASIC on a Texas Instruments 99/4a back in the very early 80s. Wrote some programs from magazines, saved them on tapes, and went on to automate D&D character creation in an attempt to rules-lawyer an all-PC dwarf army.
Fun fact, though: TI BASIC lived on until at least the late 90s, on the TI graphing calculators that everyone taking Algebra/Trig had to buy – or borrow from the school. I wrote a surreal choose-your-own-adventure game on my calculator, large enough that because of memory limitations, you couldn’t open the file to edit it without deleting another, ancillary file.
And since you could transfer programs via a proprietary cable, I put that game on every school calculator and as many of my friends’ as wanted it. It was still there years later when I visited.
Easiest Hello World program ever was in BASIC.
10 PRINT "Hello World"
20 GOTO 10
Don’t even have to call a library or declare a variable! Meanwhile, I can’t even remember the shit you need to put in front of every C/C++ program (HREF/void.h or something; it’s usually there automatically these days in some compilers, like Visual Studio).
BBC BASIC was best BASIC. Fight me.
In a world with GORILLA.BAS and NIBBLES.BAS, I simply cannot reject the QBASIC faith with which I was raised.
There is an open source implementation of BBC Basic for modern systems that’s being actively developed - BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0.
Bring it! I once wrote a basic program off of the random dungeon generator tables in the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - Dungeon Masters Guide using Atari BASIC.
GPL BASIC. First language I learned when I was 5 in 1984.
10 PRINT “Hello world!”
20 END
