Amiga BASIC - did you use it?

[desiv]

I was reading some things in another thread, and a mention of Amiga BASIC came up.

 

That reminded me about my early Amiga days...

 

I did a LOT of (bad) BASIC programming on the C64 (and the Vic-20 before that).

I worked in multiple BASICs at schools. Apple's, PETs, etc...

 

I liked BASIC.

I wasn't writing complex games or demos..

Mostly utilities. Lots of fun little things...

 

And then I got my Amiga 500...

I fired up Amiga BASIC, and stopped...

 

I mean, I poked at it a bit. I tweaked some of the existing examples...

And I never wrote a complete Amiga BASIC program...

 

I tried Modula II even, and then ended up with C. And I wrote most of my stuff in C for the Amiga.

 

So, what was "wrong" with Amiga BASIC?

I don't think it was just me.. I didn't see a lot of Amiga BASIC programs out there. Commodore eventually dropped it.

Yes, there were compatibility problems, but if it was a "selling point" they would have fixed those...

If people were using it, they would have screamed..

No one really did.. (I'm sure some did, but..)

 

For me, it just wasn't as simple. One of the things I liked about Commodore BASIC was that it was "basic." :-)

It was easy to follow the flow. I didn't need a class to figure it out.

 

Now, looking back, Amiga BASIC still isn't that complicated. It's not that hard to figure out program flows...

But it wasn't Commodore BASIC..

 

It didn't have line numbers.. Seriously, that was a big deal for me. I realize that there are bad things about line numbers and GOTOs, but I liked them. They were easy..

 

When it came to a more "structured" approach, it was going to take more investment than Commodore BASIC took.

And I realized that if I was going to "invest" time in learning, I wanted something more than Amiga BASIC.

 

I think that if there was a strong feeling that Amiga BASIC was "worth it" in the community, I would have considered it.

But there weren't a lot of people saying, "You have to work with Amiga BASIC; it's great!"

There were more people saying, "You just need to learn C or assembly."

 

 

Just got me wondering..

 

desiv

[Dauber]

I think once I only used AmigaBASIC to type in a program that was in a magazine.

 

Thing is, when I got my Amiga, it was with AmigaOS 2.05, by which time Amiga had done away with AmigaBASIC (and never allowed Microsoft to touch the platform again because AmigaBASIC was such a disaster) in favor of ARexx, which I never learned. At my college, the journalism department used Amigas, including several Amiga 500s, so I just ripped AmigaBASIC from their computers and amazingly it ran on my Amiga 600 running 2.05. (One thing about Amiga -- it's not the most backwards-compatible platform in the world.)

 

I wanted to program the Amiga; really, I did. I learned C in college but because they only taught us command-line stuff I never learned how to do any GUI programming. Even the tutorials in the magazines and the ones I could find online weren't much help.

[+save2600]

Like you, I was all about BASIC growing up and on many systems particularly, TI-99/4A BASIC and Extended BASIC. Bast damn BASICs I've ever had the pleasure of writing and creating my own programs with.

 

By the time I landed a 256kb Amiga 1000 late in '87, BASIC and some demos were about the only things I was poking around with and was totally put off by Amiga (written by Microsoft) BASIC. The no line numbers thing and multiple windows (input and output) "features" were foreign to me too. I never cottoned to AmigaBASIC at all. Thinking about it now though, all these years later - I bet it isn't as bad as I once thought. And can't you use line numbers if you wanted? Pretty sure they're optional, but was still a pain when you were trying to copy something from a programming book, where they were absent and trying to keep your place.

 

BTW: there were two early BASICS for the Amiga - one shipped with machines for a while before being replaced by the M$ version. Details are somewhere on the net I bet.

 

The other aspect to home programming back in the Amiga's time though, was the fact that lower level languages were becoming more and more popular, especially C and 68k machine. Then there was ARexx and other "easy" BASICs such as Blitz and AMOS.

 

And can't speak for everyone, but by the time I was getting into Amiga's, programming them using a crude language that didn't exploit its graphics and sounds wasn't something I wanted to do with this particular computer.

[20ohm20]

I did a fair amount of programming in BASIC on the VIC-20 and C64 and Extended BASIC on the TI-99/4A, but by the time I got an Amiga (and later a 386), I stopped. I dabbled in C++ a bit in college, but never really got into it.

[JamesD]

To really learn Amiga BASIC required more than the books that came with it.

It was a major departure from older BASICs and a lot of people had difficulties adapting to it.

One one hand, I liked loosing line numbers and having functions with parameters.

On the other hand, that was totally foreign to most people that weren't CS majors.

To be honest, AmigaBASIC was more like PASCAL but with less strict type checking.

One of it's biggest shortcomings was that it had it's own features that didn't really work like the AmigaOS or GUI.

File requesters, menus, etc... were different.

You can access the system ones but it's a bit complicated and the manuals didn't really help.

On top of all that, it was a resource hog.

Really, AmigaBASIC needed tools for interface design so you weren't doing everything the hard way.

 

I had to deal with it because a business partner (the one with the money) couldn't quite grasp C and wanted to do everything in BASIC.

I wrote a series of Amiga libraries in C and assembly to do things that couldn't be done well in Amiga BASIC and the other developers built apps on top of those.

The final apps were compiled and were very functional but I thought the interfaces were a bit clunky and old school on the business apps.

As for our educational software... everyone says they want to buy the computer to help with their kid's education but nobody actually buys much educational software.

I wanted to do games but I was always doing other things and never had the time.

[+Gemintronic]

AMOS is still alive and kicking. AMOS for Windows is actually the real Amiga AMOS BASIC running in emulation.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=60144

 

It's using a copyright free kickstart from the AROS project.

[LoTonah]

Amiga BASIC almost killed my love of programming. Seriously.

 

I quickly bought LightSpeed Pascal, but I only had a single floppy drive, so that wasn't much fun, either.

 

I quickly traded it all in on an Atari 520STfm, mono monitor, and STOS BASIC. Crisis adverted! Of course I bought Modula-2 for the ST, too... what a pile of junk that was.

[Mirage]

I programmed a fairly involved (for what it was) flash card program with Amiga BASIC. I no longer have that code or executable, unfortunately. I had come from Z-Basic on the Mac and I remember thinking it was a step backward from that, but didn't seem intolerable to me at the time. I was so happy to be using an Amiga, I didn't care, and I was perfectly willing to make it work, as we couldn't afford anything else. That was the only significant thing I wrote on the Amiga at all though, as it went belly-up soon after, and C= failed to repair it a couple times and I gave up computers for several years after that!

[barnieg]

I can't remember doing anything with Amiga Basic I do remember been completely under whelmed by it. I played around with the Amiga not doing any serious programming on it as most its use was for my college course. I had the Devpac Assembler, Lattice C and finally Blitz Basic for which I still have the manual.

 

Rather unfortunately I stored a lot of my Amiga Stuff at my Brothers between house moves and most of it was stolen after a break-in

 

Barnie

[Gibbersan]

I used AmigaBASIC. I really liked the commands to do the windowing. They were definitely easy to use.

[kenjennings]

Nope.

 

I had learned on Atari BASIC on the 800 and graduated to 6502 assembly with Mac/65.

 

By the time I upgraded to the Amiga I had been doing C and UNIX at work for a few years, and never had a need for BASIC on the Amiga. Programming on the Amiga was done with SAS/C and ARexx.

[Aquaman]

Why I stopped using Amiga basic? Guru Meditation that's why!

[MrMaddog]

Never had an Amiga, but I can tell you about the other side of the fence... ST Basic was made by MetaComCo who ironically made the first AmigaOS and ABasiC. It used line numbers, but strangely had three seperate windows. One is where you type your straight commands (PRINT "THIS"), another one is where you actually type the program itself and yet another for the output. There was no way to make GUI or other graphical stuff unless you use POKE commands, so it's pretty much useless on the ST. It was compatible with Microsoft BASIC so I used it for my one programming course that used MS BASIC on the VAX. Thankfully I got STOS from a coverdisk and used that, it was just like the BASIC that came on the 8-bit computers plus you can make windows (non-movable) and menu bars. I know GFA Basic was the standard for both GEM applications & ST games but I couldn't afford it at the time.

[macgoo]

Blitz BASIC/AMOS was the way to go, anything before that is pretty boring and not A/V centric like the old days.

 

Also without incentives for people to write arcade game listing like in the 8 bit day of C64/Spectrum/BBC in Computer and Video Games magazine it didn't matter what the BASIC was like. I draw the line at the original Atari ST basic from 1985 though *bletch* although obviously they had FAST BASIC and STOS too.

[+stephena]

I first started using Amiga Basic when I was in high school. I was really into Math and Calculus back then, so probably the most complicated program I wrote with it was a function graphing application. Of course, I didn't know how to parse a function typed in at runtime yet (eg, build it dynamically), so I had the program stop running and jump to the actual source code when I wanted to input a function. Then I'd re-run it, after having essentially hardcoded the expression It was many years after before I actually learned how to do it the right way (in C, no less).

 

Another true story which I've told in the past, but some people have doubted it. I promise that it's true. Sorry if it sounds like bragging, it's just that I'm somewhat proud of it. And annoyed too; read on for an explanation.

 

I was really into Star Trek in the early 90's, and devoured all those technical manuals. Remember the ones that were written as if you were an engineer, and they detailed how all the systems on the Enterprise-D worked, with pictures too? And remember the SNES STTNG game that contained an in-game LCARS database? Well, I actually wrote an application in Amos Professional that simulated that information in an LCARS interface! I went through the entire SNES game, writing down the contents of the database, and which sections (when clicked) linked to other parts of the database. In retrospect, this would simply be HTML pages, but remember this was 1992; I didn't encounter HTML and the Internet until 1997. So I wrote pages that were essentially markup, and a renderer to view it in an LCARS interface! And I drew pictures from the tech manuals in DPaint by hand, because I hadn't heard of a scanner at that point.

 

I didn't think it was a big deal at the time, just an extreme amount of work. I've only come to realize years later that I re-discovered the concept of an HTML browser 5 years before I'd even seen it elsewhere. And now the annoying part. I sold my A500 a year after that, and forgot to back up all that work Back then, coding was just a hobby, and I didn't think about preserving anything. And since this was pre-Internet (for me at least), there aren't any copies uploaded anywhere. The only place it existed was on the hard drive of the system I sold. I would love to find out that the person who bought it backed it up somewhere and it's still available, but I'm sure the HD was wiped as soon as they got it.

 

Anyway, I spent a year of my youth working on that, and only have the memories of it. I really wish I had the code. If only to prove to some people that I really did do it. Ah, such is life, I guess.

[desiv]

A bit off topic, but..

I always thought Amigaguide, looking back, was very HTML like...

Since it came out in late 1992 and the first HTML specs were published in 1991....

 

Hmmmm...

 

desiv

[+stephena]

A bit off topic, but..

I always thought Amigaguide, looking back, was very HTML like...

Since it came out in late 1992 and the first HTML specs were published in 1991....

 

Hmmmm...

 

desiv

 

Yep, from what I can remember of my code, it worked similar to AmigaGuide. Of course I didn't encounter that either until a few years later, since all I'd used up to that point was an A500 with AmigaDOS 1.3, and AmigaGuide didn't come out until 2.0 (when I later upgraded to an A3000).

[+wood_jl]

I don't know anything about Amiga BASIC (curious, hence sniffing this thread) but it sounds similar to the situation with Atari ST BASIC. I was totally turned off with the multiple windows/etc. and quit fooling with BASIC altogether. Atari 8-bit BASIC was much friendlier, from this layman's perspective. I suppose the 16-bit generation considered BASIC long in the tooth. What about Mac? Was BASIC popular there?

[The Usotsuki]

BASIC on the Mac was just about unheard-of.

[Mirage]

BASIC on the Mac was just about unheard-of.

 

Z-Basic was excellent. I'm not sure how many people actually used it though, or what if any, released software was created with it. It was infinitely better than Amiga Basic in any case.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Mirage

[desiv]

The Mac, from what I remember, had a lot of Hypercard (which both was and wasn't a language as we thought about it at the time) and Pascal.

I'm sure there was C as well...

 

I knew about ZBASIC, but not many people who used it...

I think AMOS and ZBASIC probably show that BASIC could be done well on a 16-bit system. But I'm not seeing that it ever really caught on..

 

Hey, I just got an original set of manuals for my Amiga 1000, and it includes the AmigaBASIC manual (HUGE) and the ABASIC manual!!!

That old ABASIC had line numbers!!!!!! I probably would have used that, as I bet it transferred pretty easily from C64 BASIC...

Oh well..

 

desiv

[Keatah]

I didn't really care much for Basic on the Amiga.

[macgoo]

All I can say is on the Amiga behind the scenes look at a trade show there was a 10 or 12 line program that allowed you to blitt shapes around the screen using the mouse and pressing the button to activate blits. It was fast too, very similar speed to anim brushes on Dpaint 3. So unless people are bitching and moaning about not being able to write Sword of Sodan quality games on Amiga Basic I don't see the problem. I know Acorn Basic inside out and it is no different to the version of Amiga Basic I saw on an Amiga 1000 in 1985 IMO. It was more like FAST Basic on the ST than the version bundled in with the first 520ST/1040STF IMO

 

The problem is nobody expected you to write games in Basic any more on the ST/Amiga, this is why you have hardware reference manuals/rom kernal manuals all with C or ASM source code NOT Basic.

 

Basic has one saving grace, when trying to write games on an old 8 bit computer like the Amstrad/Spectrum/C64 if you use ASM you need to be very careful about memory maps, if you use Laser Basic on either of those three most popular 8 bit machines you don't. It's a real pain in the ass getting half way through something and then realising the improved graphics won't go in without a massive change of source code/memory map. It IS slower but it IS more flexible. C is shit, most commercial ST/Amiga games were written in C and they look pathetic. C is for scientists only IMO not game coding. I have no respect for game programmers in the 80s who didn't bother to learn 68k and get a hardware reference manual sorry.

[+Gemintronic]

I have no respect for game programmers in the 80s who didn't bother to learn 68k and get a hardware reference manual sorry.

 

Wait.. BASIC coders don't need a hardware reference manual.. does this clash with your statement that BASIC is just as valid as C or ASM?

[Chilly Willy]

I used Amiga BASIC for a few simple things... editing the Faery Tale Adventure save file, displaying FTA maps, things like that. For everything else, I used devpac and straight 68000 assembly.