Lost lessons from the 8-bit BASIC era

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in code on (#2S0G)
Call it wistful nostalgia, perhaps, but this guy isn't alone in recalling fondly how much you could do with so little on 8 bit BASIC machines.
The little language that fueled the home computer revolution has been long buried beneath an avalanche of derision, or at least disregarded as a relic from primitive times. That's too bad, because while the language itself has serious shortcomings, the overall 8-bit BASIC experience has high points that are worth remembering.

It's hard to separate the language and the computers it ran it on; flipping the power switch, even without a disk drive attached, resulted in a BASIC prompt. ... There's a small detail that I skipped over: entering a multi-line program on a computer in a department store. Without starting an external editor. Without creating a file to be later loaded into the BASIC interpreter (which wasn't possible without a floppy drive).
Yes, what we do with computers is so much more complex now. But I do miss getting a working machine less than 1 second after turning on the on switch. I suspect I'm not alone.

Not how I remember it... (Score: 1)

by vanderhoth@pipedot.org on 2014-09-03 12:19 (#2S0M)

"But I do miss getting a working machine less than 1 second after turning on the on switch."

That's totally not how I remember it. I had an Atari 130XE, On top of getting the system booted, which was long enough for me to use the washroom and get a snack, I started my first program in BASIC when I was 7 and it took me over a year to finish. All it was was an elephant standing on a ball with some beeping noises. The ball moved back and forth a bit and every ten seconds or so a speech balloon would appear and the elephant would go "Cha-Cha-Cha". I think most of it, but not all, came from one of those monthly programing magazines. I showed it to my Dad and he dashed all my dreams of becoming a poet, something about wasting talent and I was going to work with computers... Wish I'd become a poet. I like computers, but to be honest they, or the people that use them anyway, drain the life right out of me.
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