Author Topic: Basic & Me  (Read 30113 times)

Offline John

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    • ScriptBasic Open Source Project
Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #15 on: April 05, 2016, 02:38:45 PM »
Quote
It's still amazing what can be done in just a few lines of BASIC.

That's why they call it BASIC.

n00b

  • Guest
Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #16 on: April 05, 2016, 10:57:46 PM »
Hello again everyone.  I figured I would talk about my history with BASIC.  I am probably not as experienced as some of the other members here.  I taught myself how to program with qbasic on a packard bell running Windows 95.  When I got the computer it came with a few games on 5.25 in floppy disk.  I remember my favorite game was Dr. Quandry.  I started teaching myself how to program in order to be able to make games like the games I loved to play.  However, all of my games were terrible and thats if they even worked. I had a lot of fun with qbasic.  But then I got out of programming for a few years until I got to high school and I got the oppurtunity to take a class on java.  I absolutely hate java but it did get my juices flowing again.  I would take alot of the stuff I learned in class and try to do similiar stuff at home with freeBasic.  I actually wrote my first 3d demo with fb.  FreeBasic was my primary language for years.  In fact I have the same user name on the FreeBasic forums although I can't even remember my password to log in anymore.  I started messing with other BASICs and eventually stumbled on sdlBasic.  sdlBasic was pretty awesome to use and I loved having a bunch of multimedia commands at my finger tips.  sdlBasic along with qbasic and freeBasic inspired me to create RC BASIC which is my own dialect of BASIC.

Offline AlyssonR

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Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #17 on: August 20, 2016, 01:25:46 PM »
Hi, I've been using BASIC since the 1970's, having learned on an ICL1900. I programmed professionally in the language on DEC PDP-11, Transdata CX-400 (8080 system), Digico M16-E, HP Systems (Business Basic ... nice!), and then went into hardware.

I ran a Dragon32 for a long while (Frankenstein-][ - 512k paged memory and with a LOT of hardware mods on-board)

I have continued to use BASIC ever since - as a scripting tool to automate some sysadmin jobs, write modules to automate MS Office documents and to support my own collecting hobby using VB6.

With the advent of Windows 10, I want to move into system agnostic programming, and so I have started learning about ScriptBasic. I'm still trying to get my web-server to accept that SB is a thing and not an error. I may have to regress to XAMPP (tis a shame - I'd just managed to get the Bitnamy Ruby Stack running just-so, too!).

I don't like to talk about excursions into Pascal, C, Assembler, Fortran or Cobol - and am trying to forget ever having worked with DBase and Paradox.

Offline John

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    • ScriptBasic Open Source Project
Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #18 on: August 20, 2016, 01:32:52 PM »
Welcome to the All BASIC forum!

Are you trying to use the Script BASIC application HTTPD server as a proxy to Apache on Windows?


Offline AlyssonR

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Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #19 on: November 12, 2016, 08:37:03 AM »
Been away from the keyboard for a while (summer trips and gardening take priority  8) )

Having spent an age dibbling around with all manner of software to try to get my project off the ground, I have gone back to first principles, and am going to write the initial DB software as a simple application in ScriptBasic, probably with a VT100-style interface in the first instance, which means a serial interface front end, but that is just a software module, after all.

Once I have the file handling and DB logic running properly, I'll work on bringing a web-based interface into play.

Incidentally, there will be none of this new, fangled RDBMS rubbish - the database is just a parallel set of  single table datasets, ideally suited to a variation of an ISAM dbs - with headers, indices and simple look-up lists - and the odd link to blob files.

Right now, the db is in Access 97, it is slow, clunky and is definitely NOT in a good format for data recovery.

Once I have my variant ISAM module up and running, I'll probably share it here. I'll even try to make it a cross-platform beastie *crosses fingers and hopes*.

Offline John

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Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #20 on: November 12, 2016, 10:26:09 AM »
I highly recommend SQLite as your DB of choice.

Offline AlyssonR

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Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #21 on: November 12, 2016, 11:12:59 AM »
I'm writing a custom ISAM handler - I need to be able to create arbitrary datasets with minimum hassle, but I also want the entire dataset to be human-readable from a printer dump (the ultimate in compatibility).

Offline Marcus

  • BASIC Developer
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    • NaaLaa
Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #22 on: April 10, 2018, 06:42:30 AM »
My BASIC history is short.

I got an Amiga 500 from my parents when I turned 11 or 12. After reading an article about programming and the different languages in a Swedish computer magazine I bought AMOS Basic. The only thing I was interested in was creating my own games, and that's what I did (for Amiga computers only) until I turned 19 or so and gave up on computers completely. By then I had moved on from AMOS to Blitz Basic 2 and 68k assembler.

200X I got back to BASIC by writing my own BASIC like language, NaaLaa. I just wanted to write an advanced calculator but got carried away.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2018, 06:51:33 AM by Marcus »

AndrewK

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Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #23 on: October 15, 2019, 07:30:40 PM »
I wonder whether computers which only run BASIC are still attractive to people, Raspberry Pi is cool, but it includes a lot's of unnecessary components. The BASIC fun can be found with cheap computers as small as an Arduino, and it can be made into compact handheld easily. I'd purchase one if someone made this to production.

Hi wangrenxin,
My company is working on something along that line at present.
I'm working on a new minimal extensible version of BASIC as part of it.
I'll keep you posted if you like.

Andrew K.
BNotro

AndrewK

  • Guest
Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #24 on: October 15, 2019, 07:38:02 PM »
BASIC was the first programming language I learnt.
I've used a variety of dialects professionally for 30+ years and still going.
This includes various Microsoft BASICs (AppleSoft, QBasic, VisualBasic, VB.Net, VBA, etc.), VAX 11 BASIC, RealBASIC and a few others.

Finally writing my own at present, which I'm aiming to use for a variety of projects.

Offline John

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Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #25 on: October 15, 2019, 08:24:50 PM »
Welcome Andrew!

You might want to have a peek at ScriptBasic as a guideline for your BASIC.

Offline paulwratt

  • BASIC Developer
  • Posts: 5
Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #26 on: April 14, 2020, 10:14:29 AM »
I wonder whether computers which only run BASIC are still attractive to people, Raspberry Pi is cool, but it includes a lot's of unnecessary components.

Thats one of the reasons I ran out and converted the IchigoJam BASIC command help the day I found IchigoJam for RPi. Its also the reason why I want to use this RPi baremetal project to create a standalone version of SDL2_Basic and/or my enhanced version of BAS 2.4.

I know a couple have been done so far like Raspberry Pi BASIC, but (like a lot of other BASIC users) none of them offer dialect or functionality that I want. ItchigoJam is close, based on MSX-BASIC, graphics, sound and GPIO, but only 1K of RAM. I prefer the vector based graphics and lack of external access to any files outside of SAVE and LOAD, my RPi version of SDL_Basic, Pistol Basic, as it is more like a traditional BASIC machine, so I would love to have it as bare metal, 1 second boot up ... to BASIC.

My very first experience with a computer was a fair day at Tauranga Airport in (or around) 1976 at the age of 6. I hacked some 30+ year old guys HELLO world failure on an Atari 400, he wrote "GO TO" instead of "GOTO". Needless to say I got in trouble with my parents because I kept slipping off to watch people use it, and never got access to "my own" computer until I was 15, but  I still remember it like it was yesterday.

In the meantime I read just about every computer magazine I could get a hold of (but could not buy), my favourite was reading the One Liners in the back page of (Compute? or A+?). Later (24) I rescued a complete collection of Byte Magazine that was going to be thrown out, from which I had previously built a Parallel Port Vortrax Speech Synthesizer (age 20), and could be programed from GW-BASIC via text phonetics or phonems. Needless to say the Vortrax chip was salvaged and statically fried, but it was worth a try.

We had BMC Z80 CP/M machines at high school age 13 (case looked like an grey Apple II, but with a printer where the expansion lid was), we had A Single Density Drive with CP/M 2.2 & MBASIC, whereas the seniors had multiple Double Density Drives and some fancy basic that didn't need line numbers, had labels (which could be numeric), a full screen editor and used indents for structure and flow control, did graphics and sound. Juniors got baned not long after cos there were too many wanting to use them, and I was 15 before we were aloud to use then again, and even then it was only sometimes for Maths class. At the time my cousin was given a Apple II clone from Taiwan called Formosa which I used on and off over the next 5-6 years. The next high school I went to had New Zealand created 6809 based Poly terminals with Poly BASIC in rom, for which I the Technical Manual, which got stolen the 1st day I took it to school. Needless to say the juniors were not allowed to use the Apple IIe's and Apple III's at my new highschool, but thats hard to do when you are wave jumping your windsurfer.

Around age 16 I managed to convince Mom to buy a Spectravideo 728 with Disk Drive about 2 weeks before the portable 738 was released, after I was tracked down by the police for spending too long in an inner city Video Arcade. The same computer shop in Hamilton was the first in New Zealand to have an Atari 260ST with TOS on disk and two weeks later an Amiga 1000 which used to play "Smoke on the Water" by Dragon (MOD? no words). I used to created demos and copy type-ins for them before that, on Spectravideo 318, 328, Apple IIe, Sega SC-3000, C64, Plus 4, Atari 800XL, BBC Model B, Acorn Electron. Needless to say I had to leave them and "the family computer", 728 MSX, behind when I changed schools, but I could code Z80 from memory by then.

 My step brother had a ZX81 with 16Kb RAM pack and Warlock of Firetop Mountain, that was replaced by an Spectrum 16k on which we used to successfully fake tape loading with a microphone. Needless to say the resulting programs were always garbage, but they loaded. I got baned from the Spectrum after being blamed for a failed 48k upgrade. Later when his dad replaced it with a CPC 6128 we used to spend hours play "hack my disc" where you had to find a certain peice of info and the disc could be any of CP/M Plus 3.0, 3.1, CP/M 2.24, or Locomotive Basic (no boot sector). Needless to say I got banned for using certain hack techniques which meant I could no longer win, but that did allowed me to recover many computers since then.

I Left school before I was 17, then later I did hardware Computer Peripheral Course that was taught by the ex-manager of Wang New Zealand, and he was able to get some awesome hardware to work on, stuff that a lot of techies at the time never got their screwdriver near, like 5M Pheonix Hard Drives with 5M removable platters where we could practice Azimyth head alignments, and A Wang VS Mini Computer with multiple Z80 cards, cant remember the version of BASIC we used on that, but it could multitask and do interprocess communications. Besides winning the many hacking compitions we used to have, I used to leave "my personal development tools" in E5 directories on the campus 286 MS-DOS 3 machines . (The Wang Wiki page is rather revealing). Needless to say the course was not nationally certified until the following year after I graduated, but I did get to Pretoria, SA, to do Java Gently with Judith Bishop.

As part of the course I went to work for the newly formed Unisys, still having Buroughs Mainframes and Sperry service contracts and hardware lying around it was the first time I ever used a Unix System V machine, which I broke, forgetting what I changed the root pasword to, which upset the service technicians no end, as it was also the first time they had seen one. I did not get to program anything else there (Unisys Desktop Slices are awesome), but they did send me off to help a guy with cabling, which turned out to be the first Fibre Optic link outside New Zealand, Sydney to Auckland to Welington. Needless to say Unisys declined to hire me for the Commonwealth Games, but even they never got as many hits per second as one of my pages did.

While in South Africa, working for the biggest corporate ISP as a web developer, they asked me to  make a button to print the web page, as far as I know I was the first person in the world to work out you could hook VB for Applications with VBscript, and dynamically print from IE 3/4. I was writing search engines when Google started theirs, ran my own personal RealServer Radio Station. In a non-stop Redbull fueled 54 hour marathon, learned Perl and converted 1000 flat file HTML web pages into a multi-frame database "flash application", becoming the 1st website to use Flash 5 push technology the same week it was released, using multi-homed javascript url redirection (view source line 60), later being published in hardcopy Flash Websites Book (2001, Intekom SA, the 1st one has monarch butterly). 5 years later in Australia I came across "web gold", figuring out how to get animated GIF's (I chose moving flames) to render through transparent TTF fonts with IE 5/6/7 using transform css, so the text was still selectable. Needless to say nothing mention above made me rich, but they were definitly fun at the time.

I modified a 64 column type-in to 80 columns for MSX, never fininshed my 1st Sprite based (Summergames type) "Race for the Rice Bubble" Game. But loved MSX so much I booted directly into a customised OpenMSX development system on my first RPi B, running NestorBASIC and host folder disks. Wrote a simple listing variable and function documentor, useful for 1000+ line listings, eg :' var mX=map width. I did the same with SimCoupe and a multi-partition harddrive setup. I really like using the Apple //c, the Franklin ACE 500, and the Tandy 100 EX and HX, the Memotech MTX512, the Enterprise 128 and STOS on AtariST. Needless to say I have never owned any of that hardware, except the 4M Atari STe that mum made me throw in a dumpster, circa 1998 (along with my MSX, IBM 3720, Atari 130XL and 4x ATARi 800XL, all with disk drives) , but that is a story for another day

I prefer modern BASIC dialects to use SDL 1.2 because most platforms can run the full set of libraries (unlike SLD2), so they are easily portable to older 16/32bit systems. I've added BIN$, MERGE, CHAIN and 256 colors to BAS. I have started (but not finished) bringing 2 seperate BASIC system OS executables to Linux, one is standard uppercase BASIC commands as SH shell scripts (eg. CLS, PRINT, LOCATE, PEEK, etc), and the other replaces standard Linux shell scripts and binaries with BASIC scripted replacements (eg ls, cat, etc). I would love to have a replBASIC OS integrated shell. In BASIC (where applicable), what commands and/or functions are most commonly missing? FORK and EVAL. Needless to say they will never be made mandatory, but one can live in hope.

I believe the best looking and performing computer in the world is AtariST desktop on  baremetal, with TinyBASIC shell scripting (like SH) and OS integration (like AppleScript), running natively on ARM based SBC (especially multi-core RPi's). I am part way there with pTOS, uBASIC, TinyBASIC or BAS. Needless to say OS integration (like AppleScript) is some way off, but not impossible.

Cheers

Paul
PS all languages have a time and a place, but none are as basic as BASIC

Offline Gemino Smothers

  • BASIC Developer
  • Posts: 24
    • Lucid Apogee
Re: Basic & Me
« Reply #27 on: March 05, 2023, 07:55:56 PM »
Hello, I started with Basic when I was 13 sometime early 2007. It started in the summer after 8th grade when my grandmother bought me the book Game Programming for Teens (with Blitz Basic)

Blitz Basic was the first language that I grasped and by the end of 9th grade in late 2007 I was learning QBasic, Emergence Basic, Just Basic, BBC Basic Demo, Yabasic, and more.

In 2008 I made my first C game with the old Gameboy Development Kit compiler.
In 2009 I made my first toy tiny BASIC interpreter in QBasic.

Websites I have ran and currently run.

www.geekbasic.com (no longer active)
www.promotethis.website (no longer active, but was in the top 200k alexa rank at one time)
www.trafficfaucet.xyz (still active, no longer successful - needs updates and promotion)

www.sbbd.xyz In 2020, I started a browser based MMORPG that paid out in Bitcoin for ingame currency. The game is still online, but the Bitcoin thing was disabled after a few months due to Covid making the crypto industry go haywire. The game is purely written in PHP and has real time PVP and chat. I need to find the time to update it. It's using an old annoying version of my captcha software.

www.bonanza.news My news site where I occasionally write news articles and have developed RSS feed technology in PHP.

www.pigeonbulletin.com I designed this site based on some old code of mine last year. It never took off, but I keep it online.

www.faucetsecurity.com I started this site last year to provide an alternative ad network and captcha service to site admins. Written in PHP.

www.autosurf247.com I renewed this old domain last year and designed the site from scratch in PHP. It demonstrates my Faucet Security.

www.basicgames.xyz When geekbasic.com went down I needed a new platform to publish my software creations.

www.lucidapogee.com I started this site recently to create a more professional central hub for my software. Basic Games will be going through a transition as a general BASIC game and software review site.

Last year, I decided to study reverse polish notation and create an expression evaluator in QBasic. I spent much time trying to improve it by applying it to my old BASIC interpreter which could only do simple expressions. The result was an improvement. Full expressions instead of two operators and an operand. This has dictated my activity ever since.

My current projects include Craft Basic interpreter (not tokenized), FTCBASIC compiler (FASM output), and now Commando Basic (tokenized, under development, unreleased, way faster than Craft Basic)

Craft Basic is meant to be a beginner friendly compact all in one package to play with simple code concepts and make neat scripts.

FTCBASIC compiles com files at under 100 bytes. It's limited and crude with static strings, unsigned ints, and badly implemented arrays. Still, you can made cool programs with it. One of it's examples is a pong game under 2kb with color, mouse/keyboard support, and beeps.

Commando Basic will include a tokenizer and ide separate from the interpreter. This will make it even smaller For distributing binded scripts to the interpreter. It will be something like Just/Liberty Basic.

My programming languages are available for download at my site http://www.lucidapogee.com

They also have their own Rosetta Code entries.

https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Craft_Basic
https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Tiny_Craft_Basic
https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:FTCBASIC
(Commando Basic entry hopefully coming soon!)

I started a solo band project in 2020 called Freedom Fire. Released one demo back then and am planning to release another.

https://freedomfire.bandcamp.com/
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Freedom_Fire

My wife and I are also working on another band project to revive my high school band.