Does anyone use BASIC anymore?

[JayoK]

Myself, when I need to generate a program to simulate something in language, I actually find myself booting up the emulator on my PC and using Turbo Basic. It is just me? I just find Windows a little too elaborate to program and TB with Atari800win quick and accessible.

 

BASIC really is a great language for just getting up and going.

 

May be its just me.

[cas]

when working on a PC or Mac, I often have a GNU Forth window open. GNU Forth (GFORTH) is the big brother of VolksForth. I use that to write quick test programs and calculations.

 

I also often use ReXX, which is an scripting language original made inside IBM (I'm an old OS/2 freak also).

 

I only use Basic on the Atari. On a PC or Mac, there are better languages for quick programming, that are equally easy than basic but more powerful: Ruby, JavaScript, Groovy(!), Python, Lua ...

[kevin242]

I agree there was/is something about BASIC on the old 8bits that made it suited for writing quick and easy test programs. I find Python to be the modern equivalent. It's an interpreted language like basic and you can easily fire off something quick on the command line. Furthermore it can be extended to do almost anything even games and big GUI based applications. Add to this it is available for free on the MAC, PC, LINUX, and even BeOs, Amiga, Palm etc... I think you should give it a try.

Edited October 20, 2007 by kevin242

[potatohead]

Yep. The 8bit basic environments are just excellent for a lot of quick and dirty computing stuff. It's one of the reasons I'll keep an 8bitter around. Edit: I gotta say though, there are other work paths that really shine. You just gotta get over old habits, and pick up new ones...

 

To this day, I still will align televisions with my Atari 400. It's quick and dead simple to just plot out the lines, dots and bars I need to use. Color correction is easily done with the GTIA modes too. Grey scales, color bars, etc... all easily done.

 

It's not really standards compliant, but I've learned where the differences are. It's really just a consistent reference for me that's just too simple to ignore.

 

I've recently gotten a Propeller (see my blog) system up and running. For simple graphics stuff, it's on par with the 400. I'll be using it as a TV reference here very soon. (not such good grey scales, but everything else is fine, up to and including full overscan display capability.) That's not gonna change. Love it. Cheap, flexible, effective.

 

Modern PC's have just too much abstraction going on between the hardware and the programmer. That and the GUI point and click expectations set over the years really makes a simple, command oriented, environment lie outside the mainstream.

 

Always wondered why somebody just didn't make a simple basic, that runs in a window, yet could draw and interact with the other windows on screen. Say, one wants to plot a line. That line should just appear on the graphics window, right on top of whatever else is there. Let the OS handle erasing it, etc... A few nice system calls to enumerate windows, change their focus, hide them, show them, and handle icons would be just excellent. Oh well...

 

These days I use PERL for general computing tasks. If I've got to sort stuff, take input, process data, etc... PERL is really sweet. Most often just run it on a Linux machine, with either VNC, SSH, or X window interface to the win32 laptop I use as a primary console. (Hate that, but work paid for it, so it's just easier to use it...)

 

For graphical stuff, it's either a quickie C program in OpenGL, or I just don't do it on a PC period. I'll fall back to the 8bitter, or the Propeller, depending on what it is I'm interested in doing. Usually it's video oriented things, so the older / simpler stuff works better. That Prop will drive VGA, HDTV, PAL, NTSC, etc... so it's great for just working with a display, learning about graphics, coding old games, etc...

 

Hate to say this, but I have to. OpenOffice, or Excel is a wonderful tool as well. A while back, I ended up doing some meta-data transfers between engineering datasets and databases. Ugly stuff. Got all worked up, ready to use PERL and code the stuff necessary to map things over. My mentor at the time, fired up excel, wrote out and read in some fixed record text files and did amazing things, quick and dirty.

 

!?! (Who woulda thunk it?)

 

Recently, I had a task that's normally a PITA. Wanted to take the Atari character data from the ROM, and put it into a video driver. Got the binary data out ok, and there it sat as this long string of numbers. The target device required the bits be mirrored from how they are on the Atari, so it was either increase driver complexity and lose some performance, or just mirror the bits. It was a perfect use case to apply what I learned earlier.

 

Loaded that data into OO calc, wrote a few cell formulas to mirror the bits, and did a copy paste for everything. Done! Took all of about 10 minutes. Most of that time was spent looking through the different spreadsheet operators, for a combination of ones that would complete the task.

 

Then, for formatting in the target IDE, another quick set of formulas (concatenate mostly), another copy paste onto an empty worksheet, with link turned on, and I had my data organized and formatted quickly. Another 10 minutes or so.

 

A quick dump to a raw, fixed length text file, copy paste later and that character set was up and on screen, easy cheezy. Formatting that output largely consisted of just dragging the cell display manupulators to some combination that would look reasonable in the output file.

 

Honestly, had I approached that with PERL, C, or other similar things, it would have taken longer, and I would have ended up with something more difficult to apply to other general purpose tasks, without doing some additional thinking about the problem.

 

As it is right now, that whole spreadsheet is linked, meaning another ROM dump, copy paste and it's formatted and ready to go with no real additional effort.

 

I'm exploring a mix of things as a result today. The text file seems to be a constant that's worth knowing as many ways to work with them as possible. From there, it moves into and out of programs, software, etc... Perhaps this is the windows PC way. It's not bad, but I would have never explored it, without having seen it work the way I did.

 

For graphics stuff, there are two kinds. One where one is manupulating data in files. So that's essentially a combination of software and the odd command line tool, depending on what I'm running at the time.

 

Generating displays, for games, or testing, is just simpler on either old hardware, or a micro of some kind.

 

I do avoid 3D modeling, texture mapping, etc... Have the software, can use it, but overall it's just too large of a scope to bother with. Prefer bitmap stuff, simple, fun, doable.

Edited October 20, 2007 by potatohead

[DamageX]

I regularly use MS QuickBASIC. It has some limitations, annoyances, and bugs, but (while it's been 10+ years...) I haven't gotten around to experimenting with alternatives.

[Gregory DG]

Can't say I use Atari BASIC these days, but it was the best BASIC I ever used. I'm glad I spent as much time with it as I did because it really helped me later when learning to use PHP. I find it to be similar to BASIC.

[atarixle]

I use Turbo-BASIC on the ATARI, and Visual Basic on the PC.

 

At the moment, I learn how to use C++ on the PC (Windows, VC++) ...

 

I would like to learn, how to use ObjectivC for graphical programming on my Mac ... but the documentations are BAD ... they ALL are in english (and that is not easy for me when reading such tutorials) and they all are not able to answer the easiest question ever: How do I start (... to write a "Hello World"-program).

Edited October 21, 2007 by atarixle

[Pengwin]

Being a Mac user, if I need a quick Mac App, I use RealBASIC, but I do still use Atari BASIC to test out some ideas.

[Fletch]

I often use Chipmunk Basic on the Mac, but enjoy using Atari Basic for quick projects or when writing programs with my son.

[atarixle]

I think, without such a simple BASIC (ATARI-BASIC, QBASIC, Commodore BASIC), learning programming is a lot more difficult ...

 

I don't know, how young people could learn programming, without that old classic computers ...

[potatohead]

I think, without such a simple BASIC (ATARI-BASIC, QBASIC, Commodore BASIC), learning programming is a lot more difficult ...

 

I don't know, how young people could learn programming, without that old classic computers ...

 

Scripting.

 

Start out with batch files, environment vars, etc....

 

A whole lot of good things can happen in the scripting environment. IMHO, not too much of a barrier for younger people. It's not gonna do graphics and such, but will do a lot of other things.

 

Also, just using a command shell, on whatever OS.

 

Want to rename a ton of files? That's one command, or a lotta clicks, for example.

 

Then there are things like Alice!

 

http://www.alice.org/

 

Younger people are gonna grok this huge. Cool stuff.

[UNIXcoffee928]

Though not as popular as it once was, TCL/TK is a great language for prototyping. If you get fancy with it using Starkits its also fine for production rollouts, and there are great tools for making audio apps and graphics apps. It can also be used in a web scenario, and your code is truly multi platform compliant...PCs, Macs, Linux, whatever, same code runs on it, and will use the interface elements of the native environment automatically. Those familiar with Python TK already know half of the language. It is very straightforward to learn, if you know Atari BASIC. You can get the whole development environment for free from Activestate.

 

There are tons of great languages out there, this is just one of them, and it is often overlooked. If you haven't tried it, it's worth checking out.

 

A very interesting new language is Inform 7. It is not wholly general purpose, but it is very cool. It's a language for writing Infocom-like games. The cool thing about it is that its THE closest thing to a natural language interface that has ever been released. Those familiar with AI history will wonder in awe at its power, and will simultaneously wonder why the world doesn't know much about it! Seriously, it is everything AI people were dreaming of, back in the day. Try it, you'll see. I was able to put together a detailed simulation of my house in one day, including reading the manual. Cool stuff!

 

Also, the Digital Mars C compiler is a great small footprint tool for any PC, and is another free download.

 

While I'm talking about 'must-try's... an cool piece of hardware is the Serial Wombat. I'm sure that it has MANY uses on an 8-bit. I'm using it for a robotics project, and it is quite nice!

 

 

L8R.

[potatohead]

Inform 7 is damn cool.

 

Thanks for the mention.

 

Agreed on TCL / TK too.

[+remowilliams]

I just find Windows a little too elaborate to program and TB with Atari800win quick and accessible.

I used to be like that a long time ago.

 

If I need to do something quick and dirty these days I'll use scripting to get it done. WSH/Vbscript for Windows or shell scripting for *nix systems. Very easy and remarkably powerful.

[atari8warez]

I like Basic a lot, the only drawback I find is speed on Atari Basic.

 

I also use/used these other languages at different times and different frequencies:

 

Mainframe/mid range computers: Cobol, Fortran, RPG IV, RPG RLE, CL

Micro computers: C++, Visual Basic, SQL, Javascript, vbScript, Perl, HTML, XHTML, XML.

 

Overall, my preferred language is Visual Basic no matter what die hard C++ programmers may think .

[themrfreeze]

I'm absolutely not a programmer...haven't written anything in since '95. Used to write somewhat simple programs in Atari BASIC when I was a kid though.

 

Recently I got it into my head that I wanted to dust off the electronics knowledge I learned in college and build an AMF Sparemaker system. Sparemaker was a thing AMF designed into their bowling pinspotters in the 60s-80s that looked at what pins you left after your first ball, then displayed the path the ball needs to take to get the spare. Anyway, there's lots of logic statements needs to figure that stuff out, so I wrote a program in Atari Basic this past week to do just that. Finished it last night, and actually had fun doing it (and it seems to actually work!).

[S1500]

I program in Python every day for work-related tasks. While I don't do object-oriented stuff, I'm able to get by with doing my duties. Even got around to using a SQL library off the web to interface with a database at work. Sending out emails(Not spam)? No problem. Only recently I started to clean up my progrmaming and library-ize everything.

[MEtalGuy66]

I like Basic XE. Runs faster than atari basic, has some nice enhancements, is available on cart, and "plays nice" with SpartaDOS..

[a8maestro]

I frequently use Basic XL or rarely, Basic XE to program in. I can then compile(ABC) the program to run faster and from DOS, or use it as the logic basis to redo in assembly.

 

 

Rick D.

[peteym5]

I develop programs in Visual Basic with the Truevision 3D (Engine/middleware) on the PC. (http://www.truevision3d.com) I find Turbobasic and Basic XE both were using some similar structures found in earlier Qbasic and Visual Basic. I do like programming without line numbers, labeled subroutines, and able to declare variables as integer or floating point. Truevision 3D makes it easier to make a 3D game on the computer.

[+bf2k+]

I frequently use Basic XL or rarely, Basic XE to program in. I can then compile(ABC) the program to run faster and from DOS, or use it as the logic basis to redo in assembly.

 

 

Rick D.

 

I used to use ABC (and MMG) quite a lot. When you compile the Basic XL program in ABC, do you have to make sure you only use Atari Basic commands in your source? Can ABC handle the Basic XL (or XE) extended commands?