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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">My first language was FORTRAN, using punched cards on an IBM 1130 in 1969, but when I went to teach at Hartford State Technical College in 1977-1980 we used BASIC-PLUS on a DEC PDP 11/70 running RSTS/E as a time-sharing operating system.<br><br>Students in those days had no computers at home, and many typically had no computer classes in high school. The first time they touched a computer keyboard was in my "Introduction to Computer Programming" class.<br><br>When you first logged into your RSTS/E account you were immediately talking to the BASIC-PLUS interpreter, more or less like to talk to a shell interpreter today.<br><br>READY<br><br>was the output given to you.<br><br>If you typed in the line without a line number, the line was executed immediately, so you could use it as a "calculator":<br><br>Print 5*3<br><br>would give you "15" as an answer. If you typed in a line number at the beginning of the line it stored the command in line order:<br><br>10 Let A=3<br>20 Let B=5<br>30 Print A*B<br>40 END<br><br>Run<br><br>would give you the same answer, but the values of "A" and "B" would stay in memory as would the rest of the program.<br><br>With BASIC-PLUS you did not need an editor (you could use one, but you did not NEED it). You did not have to know what a compiler was or a Linker or know how to use a fancy debugger.<br><br>Students could start writing programs (albeit sometimes crappy programs) from day 1.<br><br>On the other hand I taught a group of electrical technology students a course in how to write FORTRAN. I was allowed eight weeks (a summer course) instead of the traditional 13 weeks. Even I thought this was crazy, but the administration told me it had been done many times before.<br><br>The administration lied.<br><br>Most of the students just got past the stage of being able to edit, compile and link a simple program before the course was over.<br></span>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">So BASIC has a lot of detractors, mostly due to the infamous "GOTO". But BASIC-PLUS also allowed you to write and call subroutines and functions.<br><br>So here is to you, BASIC! You moved a lot of people forward.<br><br>md</span>
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On 05/01/2024 4:04 PM EDT Jeffry Smith <jsmith@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
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<a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/us-government-auctions-5-34-petaflop-cheyenne-supercomputer/">https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/us-government-auctions-5-34-petaflop-cheyenne-supercomputer/</a>
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Useful for running your Basic programs <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/the-basic-programming-language-turns-60/"> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/the-basic-programming-language-turns-60/</a>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Jeff</span>
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