On 04/02/2008 04:29:27 PM, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 09:31 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> Microsoft's entry into the personal computer market was by
supplying
> a version of BASIC that for several operating systems.
And wasn't it awful... I know BASIC's sneered upon, as there are
plenty
of better things, but BASIC was a simple starting position for a lot
of
people. It was also the only system available for a lot of home
personal computing, for a long time. Though, it typically was a very
feature limited interpreter. We had it on a Data General mainframe,
amongst other languages, and that went in the opposite direction -
very
featured, and gave you very verbose and lengthy error reports about
your
syntax errors.
Many years ago I can remember tinkering around with Microsoft's BASIC
on
the Amiga, since it was the only programming language I had to play
with
on it, at the time. And actually managing to make a small relational
database with it, even though it hardly has the features that you
need
for something like that. It wasn't anything really complex though,
just
interrelated databases of services, clients, quotes, and the ability
to
turn a quote into an invoice.
Ugliest BASIC _I_ can vaguely remember was on a
Varian instrument.
Memory say it was from U of British Columbia or some such. It was a
Unix BASIC, which I ran into about 1983.
Best part was Varian shipped it on the instrument, but there was no
lead to _any_ documentation anywhere.