Linux is KING - Couldn't be hacked - Mac, Vista went down in flames
Thompson Freeman
tfreeman at intel.digichem.net
Wed Apr 2 21:00:47 UTC 2008
On 04/02/2008 04:29:27 PM, Tim wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 09:31 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> > Microsoft's entry into the personal computer market was by
> supplying
>
> > a version of BASIC that for several operating systems.
>
> And wasn't it awful... I know BASIC's sneered upon, as there are
> plenty
> of better things, but BASIC was a simple starting position for a lot
> of
> people. It was also the only system available for a lot of home
> personal computing, for a long time. Though, it typically was a very
> feature limited interpreter. We had it on a Data General mainframe,
> amongst other languages, and that went in the opposite direction -
> very
> featured, and gave you very verbose and lengthy error reports about
> your
> syntax errors.
>
> Many years ago I can remember tinkering around with Microsoft's BASIC
> on
> the Amiga, since it was the only programming language I had to play
> with
> on it, at the time. And actually managing to make a small relational
> database with it, even though it hardly has the features that you
> need
> for something like that. It wasn't anything really complex though,
> just
> interrelated databases of services, clients, quotes, and the ability
> to
> turn a quote into an invoice.
Ugliest BASIC _I_ can vaguely remember was on a Varian instrument.
Memory say it was from U of British Columbia or some such. It was a
Unix BASIC, which I ran into about 1983.
Best part was Varian shipped it on the instrument, but there was no
lead to _any_ documentation anywhere.
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