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[xTalk alternatives] BASIC
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2022 3:00 am
by OpenXTalkPaul
In the early 1980s, 7-8 years before HyperCard was released, I used to enjoy tinkering around in Atari BASIC on my Atari400 home "computer" (it was more of a game console that came with a Basic cartridge and had a built-in (and god-awful) "chicklet" keyboard. I still find most BASIC to be more human-friendly than many other (non-xTalk) programming languages.
It seems many BASIC runtimes have the same issues as far as trying to keep pace with changes in the computing world.
Here's one that looks interesting with a very reasonable licensing cost.
https://www.purebasic.com/download.php
Re: [xTalk alternatives] BASIC
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2022 3:41 am
by overclockedmind
First machine I ever operated outside of school was a VIC-20. (Inside school, it was an Apple IIc.) Belonged to my aunt and uncle, and they had the tape drive, and a ton of books and magazines that ended up on cassette.
And thus began me typing ? for PRINT, and not putting a space ANYWHERE you didn't need one...
Needless to say, the VIC-20 was soon gifted to me, along with its RAM expansion boards and game cartridges. Or did I just not ever think to offer it back to them?
Re: [xTalk alternatives] BASIC
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2022 7:14 am
by richmond62
I have a BBC Master, bought in 1989, and a BBC Model B, bought in 2015, in my school, as well as BBC emulators on all the other machines, for the simple reason that I throw some BBC BASIC into the pot during my summer programming classes.
It is a good way to get children's mental juices flowing if they have an exercise in string manipulation on both BBC BASIC and LiveCode.
AND, before you ask; BBC BASIC was my 3rd language after MINIFORTRAN and FORTRAN IV: like a breath of fresh air after those, and, frankly, before PASCAL V.
Re: [xTalk alternatives] BASIC
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2022 7:32 pm
by OpenXTalkPaul
overclockedmind wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 3:41 am
First machine I ever operated outside of school was a VIC-20. (Inside school, it was an Apple IIc.) Belonged to my aunt and uncle, and they had the tape drive, and a ton of books and magazines that ended up on cassette.
And thus began me typing ? for PRINT, and not putting a space ANYWHERE you didn't need one...
Needless to say, the VIC-20 was soon gifted to me, along with its RAM expansion boards and game cartridges. Or did I just not ever think to offer it back to them?
I have a VIC-20 I inherited through my wife's family. I managed to get a video signal from it, rigged to a coaxial connector on a modern-ish TV a few years back.
I had a friend as a kid who was really into his Commodore 64 and I vaguely remember being envious of the BASIC on that, you didn't need to do all those PEEKs and POKEs just to read the paddle controllers and/or make some noise the way you needed to on ATARI, IIRC Commodore-64s BASIC had something of an 'API' built-in for those things!
Speaking of controllers I think I'm going to incorporate HIDAPI into OXT.
For those who don't know, I wrote an extension wrapper for HIDAPI, a cross-platform FOSS library that can read (and not implemented in my wrapper, but theoretically write to) USB and Bluetooth devices conforming to HID (Human Interface Device) standard.
Re: [xTalk alternatives] BASIC
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2022 4:54 am
by overclockedmind
OpenXTalkPaul wrote: ↑Mon Jun 20, 2022 7:32 pm
overclockedmind wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 3:41 am
First machine I ever operated outside of school was a VIC-20. (Inside school, it was an Apple IIc.) Belonged to my aunt and uncle, and they had the tape drive, and a ton of books and magazines that ended up on cassette.
And thus began me typing ? for PRINT, and not putting a space ANYWHERE you didn't need one...
Needless to say, the VIC-20 was soon gifted to me, along with its RAM expansion boards and game cartridges. Or did I just not ever think to offer it back to them?
I have a VIC-20 I inherited through my wife's family. I managed to get a video signal from it, rigged to a coaxial connector on a modern-ish TV a few years back.
I had a friend as a kid who was really into his Commodore 64 and I vaguely remember being envious of the BASIC on that, you didn't need to do all those PEEKs and POKEs just to read the paddle controllers and/or make some noise the way you needed to on ATARI, IIRC Commodore-64s BASIC had something of an 'API' built-in for those things!
Speaking of controllers I think I'm going to incorporate HIDAPI into OXT.
For those who don't know, I wrote an extension wrapper for HIDAPI, a cross-platform FOSS library that can read (and not implemented in my wrapper, but theoretically write to) USB and Bluetooth devices conforming to HID (Human Interface Device) standard.
They had an API for that? What a crock
Just kidding. My father and (eventually) I being audiophiles, I was always very particular about the sort of tapes I used, and how many times I used them. I can't count the number of dirty looks I got for that! A tape, was a tape was a tape to everyone else, you either had one or didn't.
Your work will be welcome in OXT. Things that were (and were never supposed to be) muscial instruments, coming alive! My Dad would have had a head-scratcher with that one.