![]() | BASIC was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This article has been
mentioned by a media organization:
|
![]() | The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:
|
|
||
This page looks like a tetris game. The images are all either blue or black blocks, in a uniform size. It could do with some morevaried sizes, and more main sections with less subsections. MichaelBillington 05:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone besides me think there should be a Hello World program listed on this article that is not just an image?
10 PRINT "Hello World"
Or for some people:
10 PRINT "Hello World" 20 GOTO 10
FL
a
RN
(talk)
18:17, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Footnote 1 says "The acronym is tied to the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz and is not a backronym, as is sometimes suggested." Says who? We can't just make an assertion like that without a verifiable source. 81.159.56.96 01:53, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, But BASIC is not Object-oriented although it is a high level language? Complex-Algorithm-Interval 02:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
The article states that BASIC "remains popular to this day in a handful of heavily evolved dialects". If you mean VB AND VB.NET this is obvious. For other “modern versions” such as Quickbasic that still have line numbers etc this needs documentation. COBOL is still around a lot in large corporate mainframe type machines. The article needs to state outside of the VB world where and how BASIC is used in 2007 Edkollin 16:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Y'all apparently forgotten about the various timesharing BASICs that were developed in the 1970's for minicomputer use (e.g., MAI Business Basic, Wang Basic, etc.). A lot of that code is still in use and probably will continue to be so for many years. BTW, in the 1980's, companies such as Basis International and Thoroughbred were founded to port the MAI style business BASIC into UNIX. I still do some development with Thoroughbred's package (which is "semi-compiled" T-code). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.228.163.254 ( talk) 06:02, August 28, 2007 (UTC)
Does it include the different/similarities between Basic and Visual Basic? Visual Basic has totally different commands, although the first BASIC versions had relatively the same keywords. Complex-Algorithm 00:49, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
The example shown here as an example of "modern Basic" is not a modern basic in fact. It is a Basic of second generation (structured) while VisualBasic and StarBasic are basic systems of 3rd genegarion (object).-- Dojarca 14:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Option Explicit Off
Module stars
Sub Main()
10: Console.Write("What is your name: ")
15: U$ = Console.ReadLine
20: Console.WriteLine("Hello " + U$)
30: Console.Write("How many stars do you want: ")
35: N = Val(Console.ReadLine)
40: S$ = ""
50: For I = 1 To N
60: S$ = S$ + "*"
70: Next I
80: Console.WriteLine(S$)
90: Console.Write("Do you want more stars? ")
95: A$ = Console.ReadLine
100: If Len(A$) = 0 Then GoTo 90
110: A$ = Left$(A$, 1)
120: If A$ = "Y" Or A$ = "y" Then GoTo 30
130: Console.Write("Goodbye ")
140: For I = 1 To 200
150: Console.Write(U$ + " ")
160: Next I
170: Console.WriteLine()
180: End
End Sub
End Module
Madlobster 15:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I didn't type them. Visual Studio 2008 put them there automatically. Madlobster 21:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Historical context: Late Seventies through early Eighties |
It must be understood that the computing experience in the late 1970s through the late eighties was one continually limited by insufficient memory resources, as RAM was very expensive and typical usage was limited to text-based programs which used less memory than most medium resolution image files in today's graphical environments.
The eighties were marked by a remaking of the industry almost top to bottom about every three years or so — today's hot company fading into obscurity almost overnight, albeit kicking and screaming. The cumulative mortality rate amongst the companies which led the way in the PC revolution — and no term was ever so apt, as life post-revolution is very different — was very high: the majority of all such companies came and went in a few years. Industry standards too, were frequently being set today and being discarded tomorrow after falling behind the next big advance. Through all the turmoil (and excitement), two constants emerged: better PCs which were a little IBM incompatible (e.g. see Z-100, Commodore PET, VIC-20 Apple IIe, and many others) failed "commercially" (meaning in the business world, though some eked out an existence in home computing) and went away; and the winner gradually became not the IBM architecture which stabilized, but the MS-DOS/ PC-DOS and eventual Windows operating systems which knitted the industry together.
Because memory chips were very expensive, 8- bit computers did not have the capacity to run a memory intensive compiler- linker program. Even commercial developers were dependent upon machine-language coding and relatively crude native assemblers (see MASM, the advanced and much more capable Macro-assembler that eventually evolved). Even these simple programs still had problems with memory ceilings and file size limitations. Floppy disks were limited to about 360 kilobytes, and held not only source code files, but executable files a system needed as well. The only compilers in existence for microprocessors were cross-compilers, programs written on a computer (usually a minicomputer — or an even more powerful computer) that compiled non-native code for another computer platform. Native compilers became feasible only in the late days of the heyday of the IBM/AT machines when memory ceilings of around 512 kilobytes became affordable. With the advent of the 80386-based PC compatibles, many other compiled languages became available on microcomputers $mdash; provided memory was double (or better) the typical 128k or 256k RAM sold with most PCs. |
I believe that the entire premise of this section is factually incorrect.
I.e., The key sentences are:
- "Because memory chips were very expensive, 8-bit computers did not have the capacity to run a memory intensive compiler-linker program."
- "The only compilers in existence for microprocessors were cross-compilers"
- "Native compilers became feasible only in the late days of the heyday of the IBM/AT machines when memory ceilings of around 512 kilobytes became affordable."
Those assertions are simply not true. In 1980 (i.e., before the first IBM PC was available, not to mention years before the AT), I was using Leor Zolman's C compiler known as BDS C, running it on a microcomputer known as the Intertec Superbrain. This was a dual Z-80 system (the second Z-80 was used as an i/o controller) with just 64K of RAM. I also recall using the Digital Research PL/1 compiler (known as "PL/1-80") on that same machine. And although I was not a user of it, I think that the Mark Williams Company C compiler was also used on IBM PCs well before the AT was available, and possibly the Lattice and Whitesmiths compilers. And Microsoft C was certainly available before the "late days" of the AT, if not even before the AT shipped.
Frankly, I'm leaning toward deleting this entire section. Perhaps it can be re-worked to emphasize that compilers were infeasible on microcomputers in lower-end configurations used by many typical hobbiests... but I don't really see what value that fact adds to this article. Rhsatrhs ( talk) 03:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
A bit of history |
---|
Microsoft BASIC (also known then, and most widely as M BASIC) which was soon bundled with IBM-PC computers among personal computer afficionados—at the time, PC's were the exclusive realm of hobbyists, researchers, and enthusiasts like the Home Brew computer club) and because it was written so that it would be easy to convert to different operating systems—soon started appearing on other platforms under license; when International Business Machines approached Gates, they wanted his BASIC, not his operating system— CPM was the OS standard in that day on PC's. The battle for CP/M versus MSDOS raged fiercely in the small computer industry for several years, but the marketing weight and respect of the DOS used by IBM gradually tipped the industry to DOS. [1] |
In addition to the "Historical Context", I removed this box from the article and dropped it here. The first sentence makes no sense. In fact it should be several sentences, but how they relate to each other and what point they are trying to make is a mystery.
I have given a fuller description of the location so as to avoid confusion with http://www.dartmouthcollege.co.uk/bayard/int/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.147.253.126 ( talk) 16:29, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
In order to uphold the quality of
Wikipedia:Good articles, all articles listed as Good articles are being reviewed against the
GA criteria as part of the
GA project quality task force. While all the hard work that has gone into this article is appreciated, unfortunately, as of
October 18,
2008, this article fails to satisfy the criteria, as detailed below. For that reason, the article has been delisted from
WP:GA. However, if improvements are made bringing the article up to standards, the article may be nominated at
WP:GAN. If you feel this decision has been made in error, you may seek remediation at
WP:GAR.
-- Malleus Fatuorum ( talk) 20:04, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
A fascinating look at the 1970's and the hobbyists who created the personal computer and the p.c. industries. "The fire of the p.c. revolution broke out in many places... but nowhere did the fire spread as it did in Silicon Valley,the center of high tech development in California. This is the history of that revolution in the Valley and elsewhere.
"Newer computer systems supported time-sharing, a system which allows multiple users or processes to use the RAM and memory"
But... RAM stands for Random Access Memory. In other words, RAM is Memory.
Shouldn't it be "processor and memory" (or "CPU and RAM")? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.218.41.190 ( talk) 17:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
On my computer, at the top of the History section the "[Edit]" text overlaps the word "special-", pushed there I think, by the image. I don't know how to fix this, so I'm mentioning it here. Dinoceras ( talk) 09:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Why does the first screenshot show Atari Basic and not the famous C64 Basic start screen? 92.105.10.244 ( talk) 10:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true."
The Dijkstra quote is well-known, and verifiable; the evolution of Basic culture and its nonuse for most systems programming is verifiable in many histories of the field (a "cite" should not be provided for well-documented material that is verified elsewhere).
The Nilges book, which describes a compiler-interpreter for Quick Basic written in .Net Basic, is I think worthy for inclusion because it's the exception that proves the rule. But it needs a cite, and a cite was provided.
The article contradicts itself on the year BASIC was first developed: 1963 vs. 1964. Kdammers ( talk) 10:26, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
There is an overuse of non-free images. Considering 3 of the 4 images only have 1 letter difference in the entire image, I doubt these all qualify for non-free use in the article, and the last is just a different version name. One image would be enough to give a basic idea of the IBM BASIC. Unless anyone can point out an outstanding reason for having four images which can be condensed in to one image, 3 of the 4 can be removed. Spigot Who? 14:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
The VB.NET sample is not very good. It could be compacter. But editing the sample is not possible. A lot of HTML commands (see wiki source) makes editing the sample impossible. :-( -- Filzstift ( talk) 10:23, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
I think GE Commercial Time-Sharing deserves at least an acknowledgement. I was involved in it at the very beginning. The Dartmouth BASIC ran on what was called a GE-265 computer which was, in fact, a GE-235 computer working with a device called, if memory does not fail me, a Datanet 30. I believe that the Datanet was developed for telephone switching. It made the time-sharing possible. GE bought the rights to use the Dartmouth design and went into the commercial time-sharing businees. But before they went public they rebuilt the system to make it sturdy enough to use commercially.
The original setup was a compiler. The input-output system was punched paper tape. So people would write their programs offline and put them on punched paper tape. Then paper tape was fed in at the user's console (a teletype), compiled and run. Output, if any, was punched out at the teletype.
After GE got the program four of us entirely rewrote it in a couple of months. I did the computational part of the compiler. The GE-235 was a very weird computer and programming for it (in its machine language, of course) was a strange experience. The original Dartmouth implementation was, to put it politely, student term papers. I cannot believe the time trials mentioned in the text were run on the real original BASIC - I suspect nobody knew that GE had completely rewritten it. GE kept calling their BASIC Dartmouth BASIC for quite some time. It is entirely possible that GE management was not aware it had been rewritten.
DKleinecke ( talk) 20:28, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
The section Maturity: the personal computer era is far below any acceptable standard:
There's certainly more, but the text needs to be on level with computer science, not an amateur BASIC-only heroic saga. Rursus dixit. ( mbork3!) 20:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi, I've just hacked out a fair bit of text. If it belongs anywhere, it should be in Dartmouth BASIC article. I'll be looking at tidying up the rest of the article too in the coming days. Snori ( talk) 17:36, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
"More important were the facilities for structured programming..." Sez who?! In an encyclopedia, what's a value-judgment doing in the article?! What if I'm someone who thinks graphics extensions are far more important than satisfying the "kerrect programming" requirements according to Dickstra? Just like Wikipedia to reflect the opinions of Unixtoxicated text-only "correct"-programming weenies... 46.117.126.215 ( talk) 01:13, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
This article before I fixed it claimed that BASIC was strongly typed. This is a false claim. There are versions of BASIC which are not typed at all. The runtime machine determins the type on the fly and it can switch it back and forth as needed. So a string can become a numeric and then back to a string, a file pointer can be examined as a text string, a list pointer can be as well. That's not a strongly typed language. Although I agree there are some versions of BASIC which are in fact strongly typed, not all of them are, and this article is on all of them, not some. Wjhonson ( talk) 21:39, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
This article also does not seem to cover BASIC as a language running thousands of small businesses in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead it focusing on home computer use. That section should be introduced. Wjhonson ( talk) 21:44, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, the article has Dijkstra's famous "mentally mutilated" comment. But,
24.229.124.203 ( talk) 06:00, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
The earliest date given here is 1964. But I was introduced to something that was called Basic before I entered "Adavanced Level" grades - which can be no later than July 1962. This was part of an ICT educational outreach programme. The language structure of the subsection I saw was very similar to the Basic from Dartmouth College. In principle this should be referenceable and therefore included - but I could find nothing. Can anyone help? PhysicistQuery ( talk) 16:11, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
Keller may have been one of the students (apparently a grad student) who implemented Basic under the direction of Professors Kemeny and Kurtz. The "Encyclopedia Dubuque" ref in Keller's article says "Sister Keller had assisted in the development of BASIC computer language while at Dartmouth College." The ACM GCSE Bulletin article by Denise Gurer says "At Dartmouth, the university broke the “men only” rule and allowed her to work in the computer science center, where she participated in the development of BASIC." "Assisting" and "participating in the development" do not warrant equal billing. No reliable source has been presented to say she deserves equal billing. Articles I found at Google Book Search say things like "Professors Kemeny and Kurtz, working with students at Dartmouth College in 1963 and 1964, developed the Basic programming language." The Encyclopedia of information Technology says "The original Basic language was invented in 1963 by John Kemeny (1926-1993) and Thomas Kurz at Dartmouth College and implemented by a team of Dartmouth students under their direction. None of these articles single out Keller as being of particular importance in that development. The only sources presented so far say that she was one of the students working under the direction of Kemeny and Kurtz, and it may be that the Keller article needs a bit of editing to avoid overstating her role. If she was the co-developer, then lets see the reliable sources which can verify it. Until then, she should not be listed as the co-developer. Edison ( talk) 19:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
off-topic
|
---|
|
The widespread claim that Sister Keller played a role in the development of Basic is an urban myth. Some sources place her at the computer center at Dartmouth in 1958. Yet Dartmouth did not acquire its first computer until 1959, three months before I arrived as a freshman. Dianne P. O'Leary spent some time investigating Sister Keller's involvement with computer science. She found
I remember seeing Sister Keller at Dartmouth, perhaps in the summer of 1961, which was several years before Kemeny and Kurtz invented Basic. At best, she observed our work on the Dartmouth ALGOL 30 compiler, whose successful use in education was a precursor to the development of Basic. SJGarland ( talk) 19:51, 31 December 2021 (UTC)SJGarland
In this article Time sharing and batch systems are explained as the same type of system.
Multitasking does not equal time sharing system. Time Sharing is multiple interactive users sharing a computers respurces. True multitasking is required. However a multitasking batch system does not support user interaction with batch jobs.
The issue may be clouded on the DEC-System-Ten for example. On the TOPS-10 operatoring system BATCH jobs were run by a program. The batch control program usually ran privileged on the operators terminal. Steamerandy ( talk) 08:44, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
There is hardly any mention in this article of the use of BASIC on the timesharing minicomputers of the 1970s and 1980s. Systems such as the MAI Basic Four and Point 4 had a highly optimized form of BASIC that was designed for interaction with a timesharing operating system, and hundreds of thousands of these systems were sold worldwide.
In the early 1980s, companies like Basis International (BBx) and Concept Omega (Thoroughbred) developed timesharing BASIC implementations that would run on UNIX. These UNIX implementations remain in use to this day, often running code that was developed back when Ronald Reagan was president of the USA.
As for Visual Basic, that is an aberration and not at all representative of what BASIC is all about.
38.69.12.5 ( talk) 23:19, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
"In 1975 MITS released Altair BASIC, developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen as the company Micro-Soft," Shouldn't this be "... at the company..."? Kdammers ( talk) 22:46, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: TheDragonFire ( talk · contribs) 06:04, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria
@
SurenaIVY: I'm sorry this is taking a while. If you're able to help address some of these issues, and those tagged in the article, that would be appreciated.
TheDragonFire (
talk)
06:35, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Hi boys, hello girls! I removed the trivia section as is recommended here.-- Jimmy Olano ( talk) 20:34, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Accordingly Wiki type of Pages refer to programming languages that are programmed in basic to allow for an asnii shell using homonyms and ciphers to correlate "their" information using hacker software compatible with Google Translator. This software does not come from anything else other than Canopy, a derivative of Filmhouse located in Ohio. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1301:877E:96C0:E216:4649:62A9 ( talk) 23:53, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
"I think Dijkstra, God rest his soul, was entirely wrong about that. I know so many really good programmers who got their start programming BASIC because that’s what was available to them." - Joshua Bloch in Coders at Work (page 170)
Top programmers such as Jamie Zawinski and Brad Fitzpatrick started with BASIC.
Joshua Bloch himself did lots of BASIC: "I was programming in BASIC, like everybody else back then, from about 1973 through 1976. That’s when I got seriously into it (programming)." -Same book
Alfredo Valente ( talk) 15:24, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code[2] or Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
The only difference between these two appears to be a single-quote after the S. I don't believe that requires both to be written out~ Maury Markowitz ( talk) 19:47, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Is there a Wikipedia article that discusses the kind of tokenization used many BASIC dialects? My understanding is:
Some articles (such as the " Applesoft BASIC" article) link to tokenization (lexical analysis), which is closely related but not exactly the same -- that article covers the sort of thing done in compilers similar to (a), but that article says nothing about (b), which compilers never do, but practically every BASIC dialect mentioned in the " List of computers with on-board BASIC" article does.
The source-code editor article briefly mentions "tokenizing editors" that do both (a) and (b).
Should *this* " BASIC" article have a section on tokenization, or is there already some other article that discusses it? -- DavidCary ( talk) 17:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
Any such discussion should make it clear that the "tokenization" done by such BASICS, at least in the Microsoft versions, is not the lexical analysis, or at least not all of it. The final lexical analysis is done by the interpreter on the result of the "CRUNCH" routine, and many lexical units are still multiple characters at that point. I've done some original research in this area; feel free to contact me for further information on this if you like. Cjs ( talk) 03:27, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
The tokenization was really just a microcomputer interpreter thing, owing to the lack of memory on early micros. I don't think that minicomputer or mainframe BASICs used it. And although BASIC compilers could handle it, they didn't require it. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:48, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes, to this day, most BASICs support (but frown on) the use of the '?' for "PRINT". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:E41C:1C01:8416:B98E:59:E8A8 ( talk) 11:53, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
There is a typo in a note. '(of even' should read '(or even' -- I don't know how to make the correction, since the notes section does not show the notes. Kdammers ( talk) 14:54, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
In the "Origin" section, the statement "While Kurtz was visiting MIT, Marvin Minsky suggested that time-sharing offered a solution" is not supported by the reference (the Time magazine article). I can't find any support that it was Minsky Kurtz met, but the Rankin reference from DTSS does state that Kurtz met John McCarthy, also working in AI at MIT at the time. I will update the article to correct this apparent error and add the reference. Cjs ( talk) 03:32, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
This "Commodore BASIC v2.0 (1977) on the Commodore 64" looks like ATARI Basic to me. Either the screenshot or the caption is wrong. Griggorio2 ( talk) 17:49, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
In this article (as often elsewhere) terms are used that are thought to be common knowledge by contributors, but might be unknown to newbies (and might become unknown to general public of later generations ;-), so I am adding links to apropriate articles to some that catch my eye. -- Marjan Tomki SI ( talk) 07:45, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
I want to find it's timeline 103.255.6.77 ( talk) 16:39, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
I remember reading an article many, MANY, years ago, (in Byte magazine?) where the person/people who invented the Basic language mentioned that "Basic" is NOT an acronym but a proper noun - a language that was intended to be "basic" when compared to things like FORTRAN and COBOL.
At the time, (the 70's) it was the vogue for programming languages to be acronyms - FORTRAN, COBOL, APL, LISP, etc. - and people kept asking what "Basic" was an acronym for - and the folks at Dartmouth kept saying "It's not an acronym!" until someone decided to make it an acronym. The existing acronym has nothing to do with the origins of the language or its original name.
Unfortunately, I read this many years ago and I have not found a citation for this, but I can assure you it's gospel truth. Jharris1993 ( talk) 16:20, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
The article mentions the MAT INPUT statement. I can recall at university, in 1973, there was an HP calculator that supported this. It also had a MAT PRINT function, that would print out the array. We used it to generate and then print out 3 X 3 magic squares. Wow, that was nearly 50 years ago. 2001:8003:E41C:1C01:8416:B98E:59:E8A8 ( talk) 11:52, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
![]() | BASIC was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This article has been
mentioned by a media organization:
|
![]() | The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:
|
|
||
This page looks like a tetris game. The images are all either blue or black blocks, in a uniform size. It could do with some morevaried sizes, and more main sections with less subsections. MichaelBillington 05:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone besides me think there should be a Hello World program listed on this article that is not just an image?
10 PRINT "Hello World"
Or for some people:
10 PRINT "Hello World" 20 GOTO 10
FL
a
RN
(talk)
18:17, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Footnote 1 says "The acronym is tied to the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz and is not a backronym, as is sometimes suggested." Says who? We can't just make an assertion like that without a verifiable source. 81.159.56.96 01:53, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, But BASIC is not Object-oriented although it is a high level language? Complex-Algorithm-Interval 02:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
The article states that BASIC "remains popular to this day in a handful of heavily evolved dialects". If you mean VB AND VB.NET this is obvious. For other “modern versions” such as Quickbasic that still have line numbers etc this needs documentation. COBOL is still around a lot in large corporate mainframe type machines. The article needs to state outside of the VB world where and how BASIC is used in 2007 Edkollin 16:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Y'all apparently forgotten about the various timesharing BASICs that were developed in the 1970's for minicomputer use (e.g., MAI Business Basic, Wang Basic, etc.). A lot of that code is still in use and probably will continue to be so for many years. BTW, in the 1980's, companies such as Basis International and Thoroughbred were founded to port the MAI style business BASIC into UNIX. I still do some development with Thoroughbred's package (which is "semi-compiled" T-code). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.228.163.254 ( talk) 06:02, August 28, 2007 (UTC)
Does it include the different/similarities between Basic and Visual Basic? Visual Basic has totally different commands, although the first BASIC versions had relatively the same keywords. Complex-Algorithm 00:49, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
The example shown here as an example of "modern Basic" is not a modern basic in fact. It is a Basic of second generation (structured) while VisualBasic and StarBasic are basic systems of 3rd genegarion (object).-- Dojarca 14:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Option Explicit Off
Module stars
Sub Main()
10: Console.Write("What is your name: ")
15: U$ = Console.ReadLine
20: Console.WriteLine("Hello " + U$)
30: Console.Write("How many stars do you want: ")
35: N = Val(Console.ReadLine)
40: S$ = ""
50: For I = 1 To N
60: S$ = S$ + "*"
70: Next I
80: Console.WriteLine(S$)
90: Console.Write("Do you want more stars? ")
95: A$ = Console.ReadLine
100: If Len(A$) = 0 Then GoTo 90
110: A$ = Left$(A$, 1)
120: If A$ = "Y" Or A$ = "y" Then GoTo 30
130: Console.Write("Goodbye ")
140: For I = 1 To 200
150: Console.Write(U$ + " ")
160: Next I
170: Console.WriteLine()
180: End
End Sub
End Module
Madlobster 15:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I didn't type them. Visual Studio 2008 put them there automatically. Madlobster 21:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Historical context: Late Seventies through early Eighties |
It must be understood that the computing experience in the late 1970s through the late eighties was one continually limited by insufficient memory resources, as RAM was very expensive and typical usage was limited to text-based programs which used less memory than most medium resolution image files in today's graphical environments.
The eighties were marked by a remaking of the industry almost top to bottom about every three years or so — today's hot company fading into obscurity almost overnight, albeit kicking and screaming. The cumulative mortality rate amongst the companies which led the way in the PC revolution — and no term was ever so apt, as life post-revolution is very different — was very high: the majority of all such companies came and went in a few years. Industry standards too, were frequently being set today and being discarded tomorrow after falling behind the next big advance. Through all the turmoil (and excitement), two constants emerged: better PCs which were a little IBM incompatible (e.g. see Z-100, Commodore PET, VIC-20 Apple IIe, and many others) failed "commercially" (meaning in the business world, though some eked out an existence in home computing) and went away; and the winner gradually became not the IBM architecture which stabilized, but the MS-DOS/ PC-DOS and eventual Windows operating systems which knitted the industry together.
Because memory chips were very expensive, 8- bit computers did not have the capacity to run a memory intensive compiler- linker program. Even commercial developers were dependent upon machine-language coding and relatively crude native assemblers (see MASM, the advanced and much more capable Macro-assembler that eventually evolved). Even these simple programs still had problems with memory ceilings and file size limitations. Floppy disks were limited to about 360 kilobytes, and held not only source code files, but executable files a system needed as well. The only compilers in existence for microprocessors were cross-compilers, programs written on a computer (usually a minicomputer — or an even more powerful computer) that compiled non-native code for another computer platform. Native compilers became feasible only in the late days of the heyday of the IBM/AT machines when memory ceilings of around 512 kilobytes became affordable. With the advent of the 80386-based PC compatibles, many other compiled languages became available on microcomputers $mdash; provided memory was double (or better) the typical 128k or 256k RAM sold with most PCs. |
I believe that the entire premise of this section is factually incorrect.
I.e., The key sentences are:
- "Because memory chips were very expensive, 8-bit computers did not have the capacity to run a memory intensive compiler-linker program."
- "The only compilers in existence for microprocessors were cross-compilers"
- "Native compilers became feasible only in the late days of the heyday of the IBM/AT machines when memory ceilings of around 512 kilobytes became affordable."
Those assertions are simply not true. In 1980 (i.e., before the first IBM PC was available, not to mention years before the AT), I was using Leor Zolman's C compiler known as BDS C, running it on a microcomputer known as the Intertec Superbrain. This was a dual Z-80 system (the second Z-80 was used as an i/o controller) with just 64K of RAM. I also recall using the Digital Research PL/1 compiler (known as "PL/1-80") on that same machine. And although I was not a user of it, I think that the Mark Williams Company C compiler was also used on IBM PCs well before the AT was available, and possibly the Lattice and Whitesmiths compilers. And Microsoft C was certainly available before the "late days" of the AT, if not even before the AT shipped.
Frankly, I'm leaning toward deleting this entire section. Perhaps it can be re-worked to emphasize that compilers were infeasible on microcomputers in lower-end configurations used by many typical hobbiests... but I don't really see what value that fact adds to this article. Rhsatrhs ( talk) 03:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
A bit of history |
---|
Microsoft BASIC (also known then, and most widely as M BASIC) which was soon bundled with IBM-PC computers among personal computer afficionados—at the time, PC's were the exclusive realm of hobbyists, researchers, and enthusiasts like the Home Brew computer club) and because it was written so that it would be easy to convert to different operating systems—soon started appearing on other platforms under license; when International Business Machines approached Gates, they wanted his BASIC, not his operating system— CPM was the OS standard in that day on PC's. The battle for CP/M versus MSDOS raged fiercely in the small computer industry for several years, but the marketing weight and respect of the DOS used by IBM gradually tipped the industry to DOS. [1] |
In addition to the "Historical Context", I removed this box from the article and dropped it here. The first sentence makes no sense. In fact it should be several sentences, but how they relate to each other and what point they are trying to make is a mystery.
I have given a fuller description of the location so as to avoid confusion with http://www.dartmouthcollege.co.uk/bayard/int/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.147.253.126 ( talk) 16:29, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
In order to uphold the quality of
Wikipedia:Good articles, all articles listed as Good articles are being reviewed against the
GA criteria as part of the
GA project quality task force. While all the hard work that has gone into this article is appreciated, unfortunately, as of
October 18,
2008, this article fails to satisfy the criteria, as detailed below. For that reason, the article has been delisted from
WP:GA. However, if improvements are made bringing the article up to standards, the article may be nominated at
WP:GAN. If you feel this decision has been made in error, you may seek remediation at
WP:GAR.
-- Malleus Fatuorum ( talk) 20:04, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
A fascinating look at the 1970's and the hobbyists who created the personal computer and the p.c. industries. "The fire of the p.c. revolution broke out in many places... but nowhere did the fire spread as it did in Silicon Valley,the center of high tech development in California. This is the history of that revolution in the Valley and elsewhere.
"Newer computer systems supported time-sharing, a system which allows multiple users or processes to use the RAM and memory"
But... RAM stands for Random Access Memory. In other words, RAM is Memory.
Shouldn't it be "processor and memory" (or "CPU and RAM")? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.218.41.190 ( talk) 17:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
On my computer, at the top of the History section the "[Edit]" text overlaps the word "special-", pushed there I think, by the image. I don't know how to fix this, so I'm mentioning it here. Dinoceras ( talk) 09:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Why does the first screenshot show Atari Basic and not the famous C64 Basic start screen? 92.105.10.244 ( talk) 10:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true."
The Dijkstra quote is well-known, and verifiable; the evolution of Basic culture and its nonuse for most systems programming is verifiable in many histories of the field (a "cite" should not be provided for well-documented material that is verified elsewhere).
The Nilges book, which describes a compiler-interpreter for Quick Basic written in .Net Basic, is I think worthy for inclusion because it's the exception that proves the rule. But it needs a cite, and a cite was provided.
The article contradicts itself on the year BASIC was first developed: 1963 vs. 1964. Kdammers ( talk) 10:26, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
There is an overuse of non-free images. Considering 3 of the 4 images only have 1 letter difference in the entire image, I doubt these all qualify for non-free use in the article, and the last is just a different version name. One image would be enough to give a basic idea of the IBM BASIC. Unless anyone can point out an outstanding reason for having four images which can be condensed in to one image, 3 of the 4 can be removed. Spigot Who? 14:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
The VB.NET sample is not very good. It could be compacter. But editing the sample is not possible. A lot of HTML commands (see wiki source) makes editing the sample impossible. :-( -- Filzstift ( talk) 10:23, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
I think GE Commercial Time-Sharing deserves at least an acknowledgement. I was involved in it at the very beginning. The Dartmouth BASIC ran on what was called a GE-265 computer which was, in fact, a GE-235 computer working with a device called, if memory does not fail me, a Datanet 30. I believe that the Datanet was developed for telephone switching. It made the time-sharing possible. GE bought the rights to use the Dartmouth design and went into the commercial time-sharing businees. But before they went public they rebuilt the system to make it sturdy enough to use commercially.
The original setup was a compiler. The input-output system was punched paper tape. So people would write their programs offline and put them on punched paper tape. Then paper tape was fed in at the user's console (a teletype), compiled and run. Output, if any, was punched out at the teletype.
After GE got the program four of us entirely rewrote it in a couple of months. I did the computational part of the compiler. The GE-235 was a very weird computer and programming for it (in its machine language, of course) was a strange experience. The original Dartmouth implementation was, to put it politely, student term papers. I cannot believe the time trials mentioned in the text were run on the real original BASIC - I suspect nobody knew that GE had completely rewritten it. GE kept calling their BASIC Dartmouth BASIC for quite some time. It is entirely possible that GE management was not aware it had been rewritten.
DKleinecke ( talk) 20:28, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
The section Maturity: the personal computer era is far below any acceptable standard:
There's certainly more, but the text needs to be on level with computer science, not an amateur BASIC-only heroic saga. Rursus dixit. ( mbork3!) 20:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi, I've just hacked out a fair bit of text. If it belongs anywhere, it should be in Dartmouth BASIC article. I'll be looking at tidying up the rest of the article too in the coming days. Snori ( talk) 17:36, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
"More important were the facilities for structured programming..." Sez who?! In an encyclopedia, what's a value-judgment doing in the article?! What if I'm someone who thinks graphics extensions are far more important than satisfying the "kerrect programming" requirements according to Dickstra? Just like Wikipedia to reflect the opinions of Unixtoxicated text-only "correct"-programming weenies... 46.117.126.215 ( talk) 01:13, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
This article before I fixed it claimed that BASIC was strongly typed. This is a false claim. There are versions of BASIC which are not typed at all. The runtime machine determins the type on the fly and it can switch it back and forth as needed. So a string can become a numeric and then back to a string, a file pointer can be examined as a text string, a list pointer can be as well. That's not a strongly typed language. Although I agree there are some versions of BASIC which are in fact strongly typed, not all of them are, and this article is on all of them, not some. Wjhonson ( talk) 21:39, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
This article also does not seem to cover BASIC as a language running thousands of small businesses in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead it focusing on home computer use. That section should be introduced. Wjhonson ( talk) 21:44, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, the article has Dijkstra's famous "mentally mutilated" comment. But,
24.229.124.203 ( talk) 06:00, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
The earliest date given here is 1964. But I was introduced to something that was called Basic before I entered "Adavanced Level" grades - which can be no later than July 1962. This was part of an ICT educational outreach programme. The language structure of the subsection I saw was very similar to the Basic from Dartmouth College. In principle this should be referenceable and therefore included - but I could find nothing. Can anyone help? PhysicistQuery ( talk) 16:11, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
Keller may have been one of the students (apparently a grad student) who implemented Basic under the direction of Professors Kemeny and Kurtz. The "Encyclopedia Dubuque" ref in Keller's article says "Sister Keller had assisted in the development of BASIC computer language while at Dartmouth College." The ACM GCSE Bulletin article by Denise Gurer says "At Dartmouth, the university broke the “men only” rule and allowed her to work in the computer science center, where she participated in the development of BASIC." "Assisting" and "participating in the development" do not warrant equal billing. No reliable source has been presented to say she deserves equal billing. Articles I found at Google Book Search say things like "Professors Kemeny and Kurtz, working with students at Dartmouth College in 1963 and 1964, developed the Basic programming language." The Encyclopedia of information Technology says "The original Basic language was invented in 1963 by John Kemeny (1926-1993) and Thomas Kurz at Dartmouth College and implemented by a team of Dartmouth students under their direction. None of these articles single out Keller as being of particular importance in that development. The only sources presented so far say that she was one of the students working under the direction of Kemeny and Kurtz, and it may be that the Keller article needs a bit of editing to avoid overstating her role. If she was the co-developer, then lets see the reliable sources which can verify it. Until then, she should not be listed as the co-developer. Edison ( talk) 19:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
off-topic
|
---|
|
The widespread claim that Sister Keller played a role in the development of Basic is an urban myth. Some sources place her at the computer center at Dartmouth in 1958. Yet Dartmouth did not acquire its first computer until 1959, three months before I arrived as a freshman. Dianne P. O'Leary spent some time investigating Sister Keller's involvement with computer science. She found
I remember seeing Sister Keller at Dartmouth, perhaps in the summer of 1961, which was several years before Kemeny and Kurtz invented Basic. At best, she observed our work on the Dartmouth ALGOL 30 compiler, whose successful use in education was a precursor to the development of Basic. SJGarland ( talk) 19:51, 31 December 2021 (UTC)SJGarland
In this article Time sharing and batch systems are explained as the same type of system.
Multitasking does not equal time sharing system. Time Sharing is multiple interactive users sharing a computers respurces. True multitasking is required. However a multitasking batch system does not support user interaction with batch jobs.
The issue may be clouded on the DEC-System-Ten for example. On the TOPS-10 operatoring system BATCH jobs were run by a program. The batch control program usually ran privileged on the operators terminal. Steamerandy ( talk) 08:44, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
There is hardly any mention in this article of the use of BASIC on the timesharing minicomputers of the 1970s and 1980s. Systems such as the MAI Basic Four and Point 4 had a highly optimized form of BASIC that was designed for interaction with a timesharing operating system, and hundreds of thousands of these systems were sold worldwide.
In the early 1980s, companies like Basis International (BBx) and Concept Omega (Thoroughbred) developed timesharing BASIC implementations that would run on UNIX. These UNIX implementations remain in use to this day, often running code that was developed back when Ronald Reagan was president of the USA.
As for Visual Basic, that is an aberration and not at all representative of what BASIC is all about.
38.69.12.5 ( talk) 23:19, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
"In 1975 MITS released Altair BASIC, developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen as the company Micro-Soft," Shouldn't this be "... at the company..."? Kdammers ( talk) 22:46, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: TheDragonFire ( talk · contribs) 06:04, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria
@
SurenaIVY: I'm sorry this is taking a while. If you're able to help address some of these issues, and those tagged in the article, that would be appreciated.
TheDragonFire (
talk)
06:35, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Hi boys, hello girls! I removed the trivia section as is recommended here.-- Jimmy Olano ( talk) 20:34, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Accordingly Wiki type of Pages refer to programming languages that are programmed in basic to allow for an asnii shell using homonyms and ciphers to correlate "their" information using hacker software compatible with Google Translator. This software does not come from anything else other than Canopy, a derivative of Filmhouse located in Ohio. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1301:877E:96C0:E216:4649:62A9 ( talk) 23:53, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
"I think Dijkstra, God rest his soul, was entirely wrong about that. I know so many really good programmers who got their start programming BASIC because that’s what was available to them." - Joshua Bloch in Coders at Work (page 170)
Top programmers such as Jamie Zawinski and Brad Fitzpatrick started with BASIC.
Joshua Bloch himself did lots of BASIC: "I was programming in BASIC, like everybody else back then, from about 1973 through 1976. That’s when I got seriously into it (programming)." -Same book
Alfredo Valente ( talk) 15:24, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code[2] or Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
The only difference between these two appears to be a single-quote after the S. I don't believe that requires both to be written out~ Maury Markowitz ( talk) 19:47, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
Is there a Wikipedia article that discusses the kind of tokenization used many BASIC dialects? My understanding is:
Some articles (such as the " Applesoft BASIC" article) link to tokenization (lexical analysis), which is closely related but not exactly the same -- that article covers the sort of thing done in compilers similar to (a), but that article says nothing about (b), which compilers never do, but practically every BASIC dialect mentioned in the " List of computers with on-board BASIC" article does.
The source-code editor article briefly mentions "tokenizing editors" that do both (a) and (b).
Should *this* " BASIC" article have a section on tokenization, or is there already some other article that discusses it? -- DavidCary ( talk) 17:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
Any such discussion should make it clear that the "tokenization" done by such BASICS, at least in the Microsoft versions, is not the lexical analysis, or at least not all of it. The final lexical analysis is done by the interpreter on the result of the "CRUNCH" routine, and many lexical units are still multiple characters at that point. I've done some original research in this area; feel free to contact me for further information on this if you like. Cjs ( talk) 03:27, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
The tokenization was really just a microcomputer interpreter thing, owing to the lack of memory on early micros. I don't think that minicomputer or mainframe BASICs used it. And although BASIC compilers could handle it, they didn't require it. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:48, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes, to this day, most BASICs support (but frown on) the use of the '?' for "PRINT". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:E41C:1C01:8416:B98E:59:E8A8 ( talk) 11:53, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
There is a typo in a note. '(of even' should read '(or even' -- I don't know how to make the correction, since the notes section does not show the notes. Kdammers ( talk) 14:54, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
In the "Origin" section, the statement "While Kurtz was visiting MIT, Marvin Minsky suggested that time-sharing offered a solution" is not supported by the reference (the Time magazine article). I can't find any support that it was Minsky Kurtz met, but the Rankin reference from DTSS does state that Kurtz met John McCarthy, also working in AI at MIT at the time. I will update the article to correct this apparent error and add the reference. Cjs ( talk) 03:32, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
This "Commodore BASIC v2.0 (1977) on the Commodore 64" looks like ATARI Basic to me. Either the screenshot or the caption is wrong. Griggorio2 ( talk) 17:49, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
In this article (as often elsewhere) terms are used that are thought to be common knowledge by contributors, but might be unknown to newbies (and might become unknown to general public of later generations ;-), so I am adding links to apropriate articles to some that catch my eye. -- Marjan Tomki SI ( talk) 07:45, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
I want to find it's timeline 103.255.6.77 ( talk) 16:39, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
I remember reading an article many, MANY, years ago, (in Byte magazine?) where the person/people who invented the Basic language mentioned that "Basic" is NOT an acronym but a proper noun - a language that was intended to be "basic" when compared to things like FORTRAN and COBOL.
At the time, (the 70's) it was the vogue for programming languages to be acronyms - FORTRAN, COBOL, APL, LISP, etc. - and people kept asking what "Basic" was an acronym for - and the folks at Dartmouth kept saying "It's not an acronym!" until someone decided to make it an acronym. The existing acronym has nothing to do with the origins of the language or its original name.
Unfortunately, I read this many years ago and I have not found a citation for this, but I can assure you it's gospel truth. Jharris1993 ( talk) 16:20, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
The article mentions the MAT INPUT statement. I can recall at university, in 1973, there was an HP calculator that supported this. It also had a MAT PRINT function, that would print out the array. We used it to generate and then print out 3 X 3 magic squares. Wow, that was nearly 50 years ago. 2001:8003:E41C:1C01:8416:B98E:59:E8A8 ( talk) 11:52, 18 October 2022 (UTC)