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Remembering BASIC Programming Languages

If you grew up back in the 1980's and had any interest in computers what so ever then I don't have to remind you of what BASIC was. Even those who weren't particularly all that fluent or familiar with computers on a "nerd" level likely knew what it was then. For those who are unfamiliar, BASIC stands for BEGINNERS ALL-PURPOSE SYMBOLIC INSTRUCTION CODE. I think it was written in c, c#, or c++ but I am not sure(contact me about this if you know). It's pretty interesting to note that a lot of programming languages were coded in other languages. This heiarchy is referred to as "lower level" vs" "higher level", assembly and machine being some of the lowest, followed by binary being the very lowest level code.

The image above is Atari BASIC (1979) for the Atari 8-bit family. This language wasn't just in Microsoft brand, but also existed for other computers such as Apple, Sinclair, Commodore, TI, and more. There is often a mistunderstanding about Microsoft being the sole propriator in the high level languages legacy. I believe the reason for this is possibly the creation of MS. Visual Basic shortly following the main-stream end of its use. Other languages like Python started to emerge. The truth is, any coder can create their own scripting-language in practiacally any other form of code from Assmelby, to C#, Python, VBS, etc. It's a simple concept. You go through a file, look for keywords, and react to them accordingly. This is where the term "interpreter" comes in to play, being meant literally.

I remember coding a lot of database applications when I was a kid in BASIC, likely between the ages of around 6-13. Around that age we had finally gotten a windows 95/98 computer in the house. So I had actually been writing in BASIC after the release of windows 98. I just couldn't get over my dads TANDY TL3. To this day I want to play with that computer still. My family was always behind on computer tech starting around the 1990's. Prior to that my dad had always went out and purchased a brand new system. He kept up with the times and watched a TV show called "The Computer Chronicles". They had a few episodes on the language I do believe. To this day you can download apps for your phones that let you use this old school coding suite. It's truly a remarkable piece of history.

Believe it or not BASIC isn't completely dead. There are still versions of it aruond that people use for recreation, fun, or nostalgia. You can actually load old MS-BASIC on DOSBOX, a DOS Emulator and it's pretty cool! There's a cool website out there called IFArchieve that has some old .bas files you can download and run! One of my favorites is lines.bas and circles.bas It just fills the screen with random lines, all different colors. You can adjust the speed and it's really tripped out. You can do a similar experiment with Python by using the turtle module. It's pretty cool. I had a lot of fun playing with it. I think Python has become the new basic. The thing is, you could actually do a lot more than you think with old school MS-BASIC and other flavors, as they were actually very powerful. You can actually compile .bas files into full fledged executables ( .exe's! ).

If you enjoyed coding in BASIC, and have sense lost the ache to code, and want to stir up your programming days again, then I suggest Python. Python is very similar in many ways to that of BASIC code, and still very powerful. It's used by NASA to put things in perspective, so it's not a toy by any means. It's also not so cheesy that you woulnd't feel right using it. I think Python is a fair balance of straight-forwardness and elegant syntax. It's also can be quite rewarding to take all of those old .bas files from when you were a kid, and convert them to .py. I personally like to make conversion charts, where I'll list syntax from both languages and separate them only with an equals sign. It's pretty cool!

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