The basics of BASIC, the programming language of the 1980s.
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In this episode, 4 vintage computer enthusiasts take a look at BASIC, the language of the 1980s.
I am a kid from 90-th. I was born in Ukraine, where I lived in a village. No one even had computers there. Somehow I get passionate about computers, don't remember exactly why. I found some old soviet books about programming in our local library. They were mostly about some specific soviet models that also ran Basic. There were long texts of programs written in Basic, the descriptions claimed those were games. It was a kinda hobby to read those programs and imagening how they would run. I used to dream about getting one of those machines. Several years later, when I became 14 yo, my parents bought me a PC. I was really frustrated when I found out that the PC ran Windows XP, and my knowledge about computers was extremely outdated. I even cried because I did not understand how everything worked there. My dream about becoming a programmer seemed unreachable as everything looked so complicated. Nevertheless, that knowledge about BASIC programming really helped me in my career later, and now I am a C++ programmer. I miss those times when computers were much simpler even though I did not witness that, but only read books. Thank you for the video!
Thank you for sharing your story. Mine is very similar but I was born in Kazakhstan. Same for me - i was coding in BASIC on Soviet computers in the school (Korvett if somebody is familiar with them). Becoming programmer was my dream. I have fulfilled it. I worked for Intel 6 years and many other companies. I live in Israel now. Came here at age 17
I was born in Brazil in 1978, so most of my childhood I lived in the 80s. I took computer classes in 1989 and 1990, so it was my first contact with computers and I learned basic language. But I never wanted to become a programmer
yes those days of Gw basic was real fun when going alongbwith dos. I love those days and I miss them so much.
Oh hi I was also born in Ukraine
Oh, so sorry. But, DOS was not in Win XP? I don't remember. But surely GWBasic had to be an option? But you jumped straight to a C version - much better coding, but Basic taught logic.
I was self-taught BASIC language using a manual, in rest room. I was sudden realized my computer could do this, I started to love it!! Now I am a software engineer :-)
@Brap Nation bro what😭😭
@@konshura6088 don't be sad!
Cool!
@Brap Nation fuck the ccp but also get outta the reply section
No you aint...
I was born in '91, but BASIC still ended up being one of my first exposures to programming, thanks to the TI-83 we used in 7th grade Algebra. I figured out, on my own, how to write a simple text based program. I showed my teacher, and she printed out for me a four page program and let me take one of the school's TIs home over the weekend so I could type it in. 15 years later, I'm a software engineer.
Whatever. Want a medal
@@radicalthunder5740 No, but thanks for asking.
@@jincyquones as if you could even earn one in general
@@radicalthunder5740 I don't want one.
nice story
8-Bit Guy: I'm not going to teach you how to code in BASIC in this episode... Everyone: :(
2:06
Ha,Aft Think(&postTacetChords)klokwerx0ranjeezWERaL0en!(111001/10/home:Unix)/c!
Excellent stuff, sir! Thanks for having me on-board.
Lazy Game Reviews huge fan of you big dog I love seeing KZhead collabs together awesome love it
Lazy Game Reviews I got so excited when you popped up on screen
When I saw Clint showing up on the video, I let a little laugh go out for no reason. Crossovers are awesome!
I just wish I could have used more of the footage you sent me. Most of it was really interesting, just the script for this video was already getting to be too long, so I had to pick and choose pieces.
Are you still using his content on the other video's?
When I was a kid (10 years old) I wrote a Roulette game, and entered it in a programming contest. My program ended up in that book, and they didn't even give me credit. They knew they were doing something wrong because they changed it just a little. If I used the variable a, they used aa, etc.
How about consulting with a lawyer ?
@@200gb3 I understand your answer, but he can't not. The game was just made by a kid, and the game did not have copyright so people can do whatever they want with it. And he was just a kid, he could not do anything.
Smug Anime Girl many years ago most programmers felt that Information Wants to be Free and we shared our work so that others could build upon it. Then bill gates began to charge for the operating system he hacked from a smarter guy and that was the beginning of proprietary software and lack of sharing information and skills
@@vlc-cosplayer true, but you have to prove that you lost revenue, by their publishing the program.
@@Je-Vette lol not really
I used to work on computer magazines in the 80s and after receiving piles of complain letters every month that our listings didn't work, we started implementing checksum routines which would tell readers immediately when and where they had entered any typos.
never happened in italy, but good idea!
@@BestFirmwareAround Italy 🇮🇹?
@@yolosnuff1476 yeah
I did computer studies for O' level back in the late 70s, first computer I could afford was the spectrum DIY kit. Those checksums were a real godsend, especially given the often poor print output of many magazines - is that a zero or letter O? often, even the comma and full stop were hard to distinguish. It almost seemed as though the magazine was printed out using a 9pin dot matrix then run through a poor photocopy machine!
Robin Nixon, that is GENIUS!
Fun to see -- I was a kid 10 years earlier, so my experience was with time shares, punch-roll paper readers, etc. No screens. The only way to "save" your program was to have the teletype create a roll of narrow paper with holes punched in it. I had a little bag full of paper rolls. Such a valuable education, though -- BASIC really was basic logic!
Did you have the acoustic modem coupler? ... After a large program was saved the floor was covered in little green dots...
Nerds
@@radicalthunder5740 U gay.
@@malwaremation-informaticaa9749 I know you are but what am I?
@@radicalthunder5740 You nerd.
IN the early 80's, I used to read the program out loud, and record it on a cassette player. Then I would play the tape while I typed, much easier.
Nowadays of course, you'd just use a flatbed scanner LOL
Ingenious...
Our technique was to have one person read it out aloud and the other do the typing. The reader performed a data check as you went along too - correcting typing - or at least pointing out errors.
I wish I had this advice 25-30 years ago! That’s crazy-brilliant!
I got sick of typing numbers into my Atari 800xl. So I designed and built a numeric keypad. Worked a treat!
The content here is great and he does it with such a friendly attitude and non condescending demeanor. There really is no limit to what old stuff he can cover and it's good to see he's been able to make this a full time gig.
Well deserved, a great content creator..
Matthew Song that's why I love to watch him
This is my first video I've ever watched from him and he's great!
A friend had a ZX Spectrum clone and a Basic programming book that also contained various video games. He would write the code every time he wanted to play, he only found out after a year that you could actually connect a tape recorder and save it, his mind was simply blown away when he learned this...
wow that is a LOT of commitment, just wow
In 10th grade in 1980, my buddy threw me a BASIC manual in the "Microcomputer Lab" and I was hooked. At dinner that night, I wouldn't shut up talking about how you could enter code and it would run. It was immediately addicting. But so were my parents. We had heard that Mattel Intellivision would soon be out with a home computer, but it was so delayed , we ended up getting an Apple ][+ for Christmas in 1981. Our whole family was hooked. I went to college for computer science, my mom who had taught 5th grade for decades moved out of the classroom and became her school's computer teacher, and my dad computerized the video production department where he worked. We loved getting the latest issue of Nibble magazine. My mom would call out each line, while my dad typed it in. It would take hours! Then going through it again to debug for typos/syntax errors. Finally when you ran it, a blocky "cow" would walk across the screen. Microsoft Decathalon (I wish I had bought stock), Adventure, Sublogic Flight Simulator, Ultima ][, etc.
This is like a basic documentary and I love it
as i posted earlier, their already is and it well worth the watch. I'll post the link again: kzhead.info/sun/ir2Jfs6LpnaopK8/bejne.html
I BASICALLY see what you did thar 😜
its a pun on its own
@Dr. M. H. yes, bitch
CONSOLETRUTH2 we got a whole jamboree here of people with magenta profile pictures
By the way David; don't worry about making slightly longer videos. Fans will surely love them and the extended length will give you better revenue :)
jippalippa nah, sad to say the only upside to longer videos is youtube's new algorithm favours watch time over views. But patreon aside, you basically still only get paid based on the number of ads shown, which still means 9 sets of 5 minute videos are mlre profitable than a single 45 minute video, because there's more ads.
Agree with that. I prefer longer episodes but as some people stated previously you should look for your own benefit and if it is better for you to upload 5 videos of 5 minutes than a 25 min video, do so :)
I think this fits the theme of the video, after all he did say if you wanna to get anything out of BASIC you need to know how to optimise the code. So we can say he optimise the video to get out only the important stuff (well for the most part)
i agree.....when i watch youtube, im watching because i have time to waste.....a 2 hour long video, as long as it makes me think for the whole 2 hours....is TOTALLY FINE i know its 2 hours before i watch it...know what i mean but...the first thing they teach you in college computer science is "visual basic"......so, basic almost needs a hour long video....its that important even today. however, i did drop that class and take C++ as it was too easy and basic...ba dum tis....and c++ was what i started with, so... i know what that one guy (sorry guy) means by being able to read lines and understand it.....i think visual learners are more easily able to learn how to code/understand it also about always having a miss typed line....its always fun when the program donsnt tell you what line and you have even 9K lines i started out by modding a game called "men of war"....i would always add and/or change too much at once, then have to go back and read every line, because fuck backups.... started by changing one value then running the game and seeing what changed...... ended up frustrated by crashes due to "copy/paste+edit" merging two different mods into one (had permission to use both mods.....one had good inf, the other good tanks and economy system) so i rewrote the whole thing and was able to remove about 20k lines of bullshit.....reducing memory usage and crashes 600 hours i spent messing with men of war.....damn fun game, a lot better with custom tuned game play to the liking of the 3 to 7 other friends that play with ya..... and then the interest in coding spiraled into the deep dark pit of despair and debt called college
This was a great video, very informative and never dull.
I was a math teacher when these computer came into schools. I taught myself to program in BASIC and started a company to write educational software in basic. Gradually ROM BASIC disappeared and the new compiled languages grew more structured and the seat-of-the-pants excitement disappeared. The last version of BASIC that was any fun was Microsoft QuickBASIC.
That is so true. Just for fun, I downloaded FreeBasic. It's nothing like C64 Basic. For nostalgia, I wanted to do a simple program, but forget it. Modern versions of Basic look like most other structured languages available today. I might as well use Python or C++, both of which I know. For serious usage, by all means go modern , but for goofing or gentle introductions to programming, nothing beats old-school Basic. C64 Basic can be run in the WinVice C64 emulator, but that's a lot of work!
There are programs for modern PCs that run old school Microsoft BASIC (They are standalone programs, Not emulators) One is called "PC-BASIC" It's compatible with GW-BASIC (up tp 3.23) It supports all the video modes ever used with GW-BASIC (Or IBM-PC BASIC). Of course, you can code like it's 1985 with it, and it will not only run old code, it even supports CASSETE files if the tape audio is converted to *.WAV files! (I don't know ANYONE who used an IBM-PC's cassette port, But If SOMEONE ever did...LOL) The other is QB-64. Same thing, but it's QuickBasic compatible. So, you can COMPILE! Both are free and both have Windows, MacOS and Linux versions! Anyone wanting an OLD SCHOOL BASIC experience without a VM or emulator, That's good news!
@@mike_98058 There are programs for modern PCs that run old school Microsoft BASIC (They are standalone programs, not emulators) One is called "PC-BASIC" It's compatible with GW-BASIC (up to 3.23) It supports all the video modes ever used with GW-BASIC (Or IBM-PC BASIC). Of course, you can code like it's 1985 with it, and it will not only run old code, it even supports CASSETE files if the tape audio is converted to *.WAV files! (I don't know ANYONE who used an IBM-PC's cassette port, But If SOMEONE ever did...LOL) The other is QB-64. Same thing, but it's QuickBasic compatible. So, you can COMPILE! Both are free and both have Windows, MacOS and Linux versions! Anyone wanting an OLD SCHOOL BASIC experience without a VM or emulator, That's good news!
While serving in Germany (US Army), I had Commodore 64 with FOUR floppy drives ,8 ,9 ,10 ,11 AND the 256K expander pack. Back then, that was smokin' .. pixel wise the color monitor was top notch for the day as well.
Military applications and proportions.. haha reading white papers on a c64 aye? Haha
Das klingt sehr Interessant muss ich zugeben. Es macht sehr viel spaß wenn man in Vergangenheit zurückblickt und sieht, wie das ganze angefangen ist. Ich hatte letztens auch ein Spielchen ähnelnd zu den alten in java programmiert und es machte sehr viel spaß.
4 floppy drives? Man you were rich..
Four 1541s? Dang the Army paid good back in the 80s.
10 PRINT "LIKE" 20 GOTO 10
LOL
30 END
like like like like like like like like like like end.
2 PRINT "DID YOU LIKE THIS EPISODE?" INPUT $ 4 IF $ = Y THEN GOTO 10 ELSE IF $ = N THEN GOTO 6 6 PRINT "I HOPE YOUR CEREAL GOES SOGGY!" 8 END
00 PRINT "FRIST" 01 GOTO 00
My first experience with BASIC was with a book called "Teach yourself BASIC". I bought it a a local book store after seeing BASIC running an texted based RPG on my friend's TRS-80. I didn't have a computer of my own when I bought the book, but my parents saw that I had such a great interest in it, they gave me a Timex Sinclair for Christmas, Had lots of fun with it and it helped increase my knowledge of BASIC programming and my interest in computers greatly, A good example was that I took a computer accounting class in my senior year in high school, and the software (written in BASIC) was so buggy, I offered to debug and fix it. My accounting teacher was so impressed, she gave me an A just for doing so, I never had to do any actual accounting work to pass the class. Been in the computer tech support field now for 26 years now, and to owe it all to teaching myself BASIC.
RPG on a home computer ?
Nice story you had there sir.
That's a nice story. Thanks for sharing! Whish I had started as a child (TI Voyage 200 "programs", basically easy shell scripts, don't count :D).
I wrote my senior project in GFA BASIC on the Atari 1040ST in 1988. It was a working oscilloscope that used the bidirectional printer port in conjunction with an A/D converter. The A/D chip was donated by Texas Instruments. I actually called them on a landline using directory assistance and worked my way to an engineer that sent me the chip. Thank you sir wherever you are. I could display sine waves, square waves, sawtooth, DC etc. up to 40V. You could even save one waveform and display a live over it. Got second place. Still have the final report with the source code. To increase the speed, I had a section written in Assembly language. I could display signals up to 2 kHz before they became too blocky. One of things that I cherish to this day. Btw I just put in my preorder for the Commander X16 yesterday!
I once coded a text adventure as a kid using Turbo Pascal :'D It was actually pretty good.
You still have code source?
Can i play it ☺️
Mine was a pirate themed text adventure game with graphics and combat. It also had PC speaker music and sound effects, it took me about six months to write when I was 15. I used Microsoft quick basic.
I used basic mostly for "utility software". I typed in equations from my math- or physics homework, to solve everything quicker. with graphics sometimes. I learned Turbo Pascal in 11th grade briefly, our teacher was a lazy and stupid guy. Had no experience in IT.
@@stuffsonanimation4262 Sorry, it was in German :D
The thing i love from the early 80s is that every nerd actually had to become competent in coding (somehow). I play lots of games on the PC, these years, and i work with graphics and animation. Still i don't know anything about code. One one hand computers have become more accessible and easy to use (not to mention faster); but we end up with many gaps in our PC knowledge.
It's easier to code than ever thanks to forums, video tutorials, copy and pasting and more informative error notifications and documentation. The reason we have so many gaps is because there is so much more to learn that you're best of specialising. If you want to make a game in Unity by yourself for example you need to learn to code, you need to modelling software, sound software, image editing etc which could take years to get to a reasonable standard at.
@Chopto Well, in the past you had to pay for the Compilers. If you wanted to program anything serious you had to learn Turbo Pascal, C or Assembler. And for the first two you had to buy a compiler and for the latter an assembler. Now a days you can download a Compiler for nearly any language for free. And Jim Giant is right, it's much more easier today. You have forums, and wikis, plenty of books, even free online books that teach you to code and APIs that simplify a lot. Also you have plenty of great editors and IDEs to chose from and most of them are available for free. The hardware also helps, you have plenty of RAM and CPU processing power. But the big problem is in my opinion not even the amount of things you have to learn, but the internet and great games that will distract you heavily from learning to code. Today it's much simpler to use a spreadsheet software to calculate something complex than to code a program that does the same job. And there are plenty of tools available for free that do this or that, thus it's much easier to just search and download them than writing them on your own. If you don't have the discipline for, the internet and games will be your nightmare and time-consuming activity, it will distract you from programming. Thus today if you want to learn programming it's much better to don't have an internet connection at all. This will force you to learn programming.
@jippalippa That's why the Raspberry Pi was made for. It should be a platform for Kids to actually learn programming again.
8-Bit Guy, Ben Heck, Jim Leonard, and Clint from LGR?! Oh man, you guys need a podcast!! Thank you for a great episode and getting everyone together!
agreed, i’d love to see that
Thought this was great!
When I was about 12, I was obsessed with Thunderbirds and I managed to write a fully functioning text-based adventure game in BASIC on my C64 where you took on the role of Virgil. Your brothers (Scott, Alan, John and Gordon) had been kidnapped by The Hood and you had to explore Tracy Island (control room, lounge room, launch pad, etc) looking for clues as to their whereabouts. I had such a vivid imagination back then, but I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything! Thanks for the upload! 😀✌
that sounds so cool bro
Basic was my first programming language! And I absolutely had basic in my math textbooks. One weekend I went through the entire book and created huge program that contained every program that was listed in the entire book. I lost it sometime shortly after -- I can't remember if I was using BASIC itself or QBASIC. Later on in middle school I had a teacher who taught basic itself. He wouldn't let us use QBASIC but he noticed my interest and let me fiddle, along with working on the Novell token ring network that ran the school's network/imaging machines. Later, he gave me a copy of QuickBasic so I could compile my applications into actual executable. Without his interest in me I would have never got into IT. Thanks Mr. Johnston!
I didn't have Basic in my math books (graduated '88), but one of the schools I went to in Texas had Computer Math. It was an awesome course, but we moved to South Carolina and they didn't even have computers in the school there.
Eric Jones awesome guy
@Eric Jones QBASIC was shipped with MS-DOS >= 5.x and worked without line numbers. If you didn't have to write line numbers it's very likely that it was QBasic if your machine was a DOS PC. If you had to write line numbers and had a DOS PC, it's very likely that you had GW-Basic which was shipped with MS-DOS till MS-DOS
A very smart friend of mine wrote a BASIC compiler - in BASIC - on his Commodore 64 and (here's the genius part) once he had it finished, he compiled...the compiler USING the compiler! Then the compiler itself was compiled! I think he sold it to one of the 8-bit computer magazines for a couple hundred bucks.
Was that Austro Compiler? I had that on my C64. A compiler which was written in Basic and then compiled with itself.
Now that's what I call... Compile-ception.
That is an obvious compiler construction (bootstrapping). First done with LISP.
that's how that language was, you really could easily create whatever you wanted, simple cool programs... I had a working kids tutorial on my Casio digital assistant back in 2000. It was so intuitive I enjoyed guessing the missing letters and learning vowels and alphabets ... well, that I had put in there
I wouldn't call it *obvious*, but it was and is common practice in the world of compilers. Start with some other means of getting the first version running, using an interpreter or a bare-bones compiler written in another language, then use bootstrapping to expand and improve the language using the language.
I used to love those old basic machines! My first intro to home computing was by one of the fellows I hired on the Police Department where I served as the Chief of Police. He had a VIC=20 and invited me to come over and see his "computer" I played with the machine for about an hour and was in heaven! Later another new hire on the PD came with a C=64, it was brand new on the market and expensive but man that machine could RUN! Our local Radio Shack had their old system set up for demo in the store, I think the price was around a thousand bucks back then, I used to visit the store on rounds during the day and stop in to visit their computer. The sales lady who ran the store taught me a bit of basic, and I nearly bought that system, my wonderful wife nixed the deal, I guess I would thank her for that were she still alive. A few years later I had moved on in Law Enforcement and making a bit more money I ordered a C=128 from Sears, put it on my sears card, along with a 1571 and per my son's request a cassette deck (he knew about such things) the race for software was on. Our local Game Warden had a C=64 and a huge collection of software he would borrow to me so I could decide if I would like to get the games, but my love was for the magazine games as well, I had a huge collection of the magazine games and the CD's that you could get with the magazines after my fingers were worn to the bone poking in the machine language programs that came in the mags. I do miss those days, Today my laptop takes a bit longer to boot the the old instant on 128 and, of course does a billion more things a billion times faster. One thing it does well though is emulate the Commodore system.
This brings back memories. I learned basic on the VIC-20 from the manual that came with it. Once learned, it was easy to make your own games.
That VIC-20 manual was really good. I loved programming my vic-20.
I started my young life with a VIC20 my dad bought. Learned and programmed many things in BASIC. Then we migrated to a C64. I thought we at the forefront of tech. Graphics and sound? Unreal I thought. Fast forward to today and I am now a retired PLC programmer. (Programmable Logic Controller that runs industrial machinery.) In my free time as retired I program microprocessors like the Arduino, ESP8266 and the ESP01-S using C++. My driveway is over 200 feet long and it's hard to see the flag up when we do get mail. So I programmed an ESP8266 to connect to my WiFi and send a text message to my cell phone and an email when the mail gets delivered. It's solar powered and has been running strong for over three years now. Signed a 65 year old nerd. 😁
@@DaveBuildsThings Glad to know that the VIC20 kickstarted an interest that became your career! I hope you continue to enjoy your retirement.
@@neddyl1225 Thanks Neddy.
I wrote my first BASIC program in 1973. 44 years later, I'm an ERP consultant, and I still make many billable hours programming in VB 6.0, last compiled on 6/25/98, and last patched 5/23/00.
Jay Converse incredible really.
lol that's pretty cool. I wonder if I'll live long enough to reach that point. I only ever handled flavors of VB starting with 6 up to .NET (VB6/VBA/VBS/VB.NET), but never with BASIC itself, which mainly interests me for creating programs to be run on Japanese 80s and maybe 90s computers. (Sharp, NEC and Famitsu Micro ones. And maybe MSX.)
I can remember my mom typing almost an entire ~2k line game and the electric running out when she was almost done, almost killed my dad when she found out he knew it was running out and didn’t say anything 😆
Morsure fatale oh shit, I must be imaging things then, it’s not C64’s we’re in common use well into the mid 90’
Always save every 10 minutes
Opecuted yes, save often 😅
@@ZaHandle I hit CTRL + S as a reflex at this point lmao
Your dad should be locked up in guantanamo bay.
Holy Cow! in 1994, that was my Algebra text book! Oh... the nostalgia!
It helped me in math class too
@@sethfoulk6990 Ahhh... the good 'ol days.
This video encapsulates everything that made me tick when I was 13 just 10 years ago and discovering everything computers did, what they do, and what they could do in the future. EXCELLENT video sir!
400 lines of code later cat walks across keys lol
Or your little sister runs through the power cord and unplugs the computer....that is a true story by the way.
TechBaron, Cameras and more! yep lol. or you'd save hours of basic programing to tape only to realise the cable was connected to the wrong mic/ear port and you had a tape of silence.
dude..you dont even know i started coding when i was like 14 playing a game called "men of war" because one mod had good inf, the other had good tanks.....no mods had both so 600 hours and 150K lines later.... i not only had goods tanks and inf systems....but also Finland (i cant do modeling...just cant, so a dude who cant do coding gave me the models), more realistic ranges and armor pen system, changed pen and damage values for EVERY gun to real life data when their...did the same for armor plate thickness and angle added in so many new units and skins that the game started to crash due to lack of memory (stupid 32 bit 4 gig bs) also changed the economy system......which was a HUGE pain in the ass, i have no idea why it works too this day, but it works. but.....all of my notes, templates, back ups, ETC...... ALSO!!! i had almost finished optimizing the game engine it self....for the new version.. along with rewriting all of the code to get rid of useless lines......i had fixed the 4 gig memory crashes, that honestly, made my mod run like shit but....all that shit was on mega upload because im a fucking noob ok i uploaded a backup to mega...because my hdd was failing...... by the time i got the replacement.....FBI EVERY BODY GET DOWN and now the government has my shit.... and they arnt giving it back. im still so fucking pissed man.......didnt have the space on my remaining SSD to download my wok...now its fucking gone ive taken 2 years of comp sci classes in college...then ran out of money..so, that game did help me out in real life quite a lot (was in c++, didnt even know what i was messing with back then till i took a c++ class and everything was REALLY familiar) but fuck the FBI man
followed by delete
@@kainhall Makes me wonder how many genius things have been lost over the years to stuff like this. Kinda like the Romans had the shit then lost it all & we went into the dark ages. Hmm.
7:30 "Paper was cheaper than disks back then." Think about that, kids.
Kid response: "What's a disk?"
Heh. :-) There was a joke or cartoon I saw somewhere, where a kid is looking at a 3 1/2" disk, and comments "Oh, cool - you 3D-printed a "Save Icon".
+MrJest2 I was in a community college IT class a few years ago and I was the only one who knew what the save icon was meant to be. Then again, I was closing in on 30 while my classmates were high school graduates.
JamesDavy2009 Then they are still old enough to know what a floppy disk is. One thing I've noticed about Millenials (especially the ones who were emo kids in the early 2000's) is that they think it's "cute" to be stupid, and they will try to act and claim that they're younger than they actually are. I mean, how come I knew about things that were used before I was even born? I never used an 8-track tape in my life, but I still know what it is. But Millenials try to play dumb and claim that they've never seen something or they "don't remember" it and use their age as an excuse...even though they ARE plenty old enough to remember it. It's just that they have a Peter Pan complex and want to act like they're younger, because they think it makes them "cute."
JamesDavy2009 that's impossible... I would've been in college then, and through 1st-9th grade we had to have a floppy disc for computer class, so everyone knew what it was and how it worked. Most kids over the age of probably 17 know what a floppy disc is now because when they started using a computer they were still regularly used, or their parents gifted them their old computer which used them.
This is so fascinating reading the comments. I'm a recent graduate and my first software engineering job is in Basic. It is so cool to be learning this relic of a language and reading about the memories everyone has had with it.
I wish BASIC was still around and available. I loved writing code with BASIC. Just for fun.
"It was kind of fun, you would type it all in and at the end you would have'... to fix a million syntax errors.
And as a kid not knowing how to do text editing on the respective PC model, you had to retype that whole line. Or the other more maddening errors were errors made that were syntactically correct but caused the program to not work correctly, such as a math routine for moving graphics that caused screen corruption.
@@stonent Yeah that's right! What were those errors called? Undefined line or something
at least you dont get many syntax errors in assembly.
Atari Basic would parse the code when it was entered and then compile it into P code. When you typed "RUN" Atari Basic would just run the code without any interpreting at run time. So why wasn't it faster? Well, it was, see Turbo Basic that fixed what was making Atari Basic so slow. Atari wanted their basic to run on an 8K cartridge and the only way they could do that was to use the built in BCD math package that was built in to the O.S.. Sadly, the person who wrote it had never written a math package before and did a very bad job of it.
@@stonent The great part about BASIC is that when it encounters many errors, it stops immediately and gives you information to track them down. Other programming languages weren't so nice. The errors caused by the little 1 or 2 character typos that get past the filters are the WORST.
Ben Heck and LGR!? Sweet!
Another Henderson!? Sweet!
BigBrotherPinkie Gross, the person who supports pedophiles is here...
It's kinda retrotech porn
3 of my favourite KZheadrs in one video? how is that even possible
Well it´s basic magic thats how.
Currently learning a lot from your channel. Thank you for all of the great content
Thank you very much for this video, it brought me back to my early days in bachelor when I tried to make my BASIC programs run...lovely days...
4:47 - the timer reads 13 minutes 4:50 - the timer reads 7 minutes & 14 seconds.... What
Zach Kromer I saw that too
Saw that. Yup. Editing woes...lolz
They call it skipping time.
Zach Kromer Timelord
He was programing a Flux Capasator. Sometimes they kinda "burp", hence the fluctuation.
The original Ultima was written in BASIC too!
Don't forget Akalabeth!
The original Oregon Trail was written in basic as well.
Kandi Gloss Wow. I didn't know that... it's my favorite game aswell :)
"Pirates!" has huge chunks of it written in BASIC.
And Roadwar 2000
When I was 7, I made my C64 beep a melody with Basic, which cemented my future as a software developer and hobby producer...
Please make more of these BASIC language history videos- I think they are great!
My high school tried to teach we kids BASIC in the early 80s. We ended up teaching the teacher. The teacher would then turn around and gig us for producing a flowchart after writing a program. Good times!
Yeah, I loved these times. I ruled the class, my teacher asked me if he had problems and he was right I will end up in IT
@The Blue Max 713 we get old. One day, our apprentices will ask why we 3d printed the save icon
same here...
Same here. I had BASIC and then Pascal at school.
I was raised in the hood in the 80s and didn't have a home computer. I remember learning how to program in the early 90s at 14 or 15. And I remember trying to learn QBasic on an old 20286. Funny how I never really got the hang of basic. It wasnt until I learned C++ in college where it clicked and I knew I was destined to be a software engineer. 21 years later still at it as a career.
dude started with c++
@@swirl6996 I knew many people in the very old days of the early 70’s who started with assembly language. When they first saw BASIC they said it was confusing
@@charlesbaldo Yeah but that was back when your only other option was fucking Fortran, and even then, it was incredibly limited. Honestly, I actually find the same thing happening, it was really easy to switch from Python/Bash to C++, but when I tried learning JavaScript after only doing C++ for about 5 months, I was really confused. I wasn't used to dynamic weak typing, automatic casting, primitives being classes, tons of stuff being built-in (no #includes or imports), lambda syntax, the difference between its async and std::async, no access to pointers or directly allocated heap/memory, etc etc... I also recently learned MIPS64 assembly and it was way, way easier than Javascript. I think it's just that the concepts of C++ are a hell of a lot easier to understand than the abstractions higher-level langs put on; since I knew what I was doing, I could directly control many things of a single call, whereas in those scripting languages, it's just one function call with a few arguments, often giving you little to no control over what it's actually doing. Plus, no custom operators or destructors was weird; really limited the functionality of custom precision/size integer/float classes. Maybe it's also because MIPS64 is nearly identical to C++ in a lot of ways, who knows?
@@swirl6996 You understand it all my friend. And yes I have to agree with “Fucking FORTRAN” I did it on a Honeywell 9000 in 1977 for a bank. I remember the COBOL guys bragging about 50k programs, put together by a whole team over a month. I can pump out 50k in a day and my laptop has more storage and speed than the Honeywell the leased for $100k a month.
@@charlesbaldo What'd you mean by a "50k" program? And are you referring to your current laptop or the one at the time? I've actually tried some older languages (namely fortran and ALGOL) and to be honest, it's incredibly polarizing when you compare it to C++. ALGOL/Fortran are faster and less complex, yet C++ is so much more powerful. Kinda like the relation between C and C++, tho a bit more extreme.
This content is so important for history keeping. Would love to see a complete history of computing web series from you guys!
Awesome video! The first programming class I ever took was Programming in Visual BASiC. I don't know how much it has in common with old-school BASIC, but it's cool to think that the language is still in use in some form. Some programs even have special VBA engines.
Back in the day, I was one of those who wrote the programs that ended up in the magazines, for Atari. ANTIC and ANALOG were the main magazines, and you could do amazing things with those old 8 bit machines.
Leave it out!!!
Awesome. I used to type in programs from magazines for my Amstrad CPC - learnt a lot and often modified them. Back then the people writing those magazine programs seemed like gods of programming to us high school kids.
Long episode, YES
EpicLPer furry....
Before I'd be a furry I'd rather kill myself, not kidding.
I don't understand... How do you keep getting the top comment on every video I watch? You've got 2 on this video!
I wish that you did more videos like this. Really enjoyable.
Reading the comments make me see how Simple language like BASIC actually lead to many people becoming Programmers/Software Developer. And now actually another generation are being born and raised by Arduino and Raspberry pi. It's leading a lot of people enter Mechanical engineering and Electrical Engineering.
BASIC was taught in schools. Then we decided not to teach basic computer programming fundamentals to children because that's way too sensible.
@Shufei 10 PRINT "YOU'RE RIGHT" 20 GOTO 10
We needed teachers that were taught to actually use a computer. No fun in limiting the computer use to an elaborate version of a typewriter.
In the US, it was because of a lack of funding all around.
Most people never need to write a single line of code in their life. It definitely should be an optional elective though.
@@CarrotConsumer this has a rather long intro but, it really is a good story: "Isaac Asimov's A Feeling of Power" kzhead.info/sun/Zrpre9qRZHlmnZE/bejne.html
I come from China, although I am 15 years old, but I like your program very much, I like the old computer.I don't understand English, I see the subtitles.
wang kelin why did you comment about this?
Sockover Dickgamer google translate, or maybe he can type some english, can read, but cant really listen.
EmeraldGameZ ooh o.o
Nice to hear from you Wang!
Can you actually see the subtitle though?
for anyone wishing to still program in a basic like language in 2022 , there is always AGK, (application game kit). its procedural basic, no line numbers, fast, can produce programs and games for the PC , Mac , Linux , IOS and Android. it comes with tons of examples so you can figure out how to code anything the language can do just from running an example of the type of program you wish to make. it also allows you by installing AGKs Player to your phone to transmit over wifi to your phone and test your code in seconds, instead of having to install your program on your phone every time you wish to test it. it also does 2D and 3D and is great for small games. and no, I do not work for or have an contact with makers of AGK, I just like to help people find cool languages .
This is a great video. Thank you for making it. I was fortunate to begin my journey into programming by learning QBASIC through a three-hour Intro to Programming class I took in college in 2004. Every Saturday morning, from 8am-12pm, our instructor, an IBM project manager/adjunct professor, would walk us through new aspects of the language and then turn us loose to code. It was an unforgettable experience, and I learned a great deal.
If you went on the qbasic forum community, we might have crossed paths. I was active on that community starting around 2005, and in the qb64 community in the early 2010s. Unfortunately, the qbasic forums died with the takeover of network54 by tapatalk.
47 minutes to create a game. 1 single pull to delete it.
Hans5958 sounds like legos all over again to me
Profile picture checks out
30 years to create a decent life, one mistimed pullout to delete it ;)
@@pianoman78 delete this before you fuck up another's.
@Hans5958 Not really, you are really really really careful not to accidentally unplug the the the cord or power down before saving to disk. You saved very very often
This is one of my favorite videos on KZhead. I started with Microsoft Basic and it was the start of my love for programming. Please do a video on the influence of Turbo Pascal. Thanks
I actually have an old book about learning BASIC from the 60’s and I’ve been learning it.
Imagine going to a store to buy a cysis book then going home to code it for two years so you could just play games
"Can it play crisis?" "I don't know yet!"
No no no, you could BUY it on audio cassette and load that in! Of course, it MIGHT be quicker just to type in the code...
@@calebfuller4713 what if they didn’t exist
LGR, lives up to his name Lazy. Sends a picture of program to someone else.
Loved this episode. I recently discovered AOZ studio (currently in Beta) really excited about it. Programming is fast and FUN again!!
Atari 800XL was my first computer. I got it from the PX in Seoul while I was serving in Korea in 1984.
Nice work getting all these youtube celebrities to appear in this video.. and yes, it really takes me back. BASIC is what made me a "computer guy" forever!
Dad got a Sinclair ZX81 (Timex 1000) in 1982 when I was 13, fell in love with BASIC instantly and still program in it to this day on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Commodore Amiga using AMOS. Both have superb BASIC Compilers! Keep up the good work! Loving your vids.
BBC Basic was one of the best (sadly missing from this vid), and even survived through to being built into their 32-bit Archimedes machines.
It's still available today on several platforms and markedly superior to MS Basic in both function and speed. Of course, these days we have things like Visual Basic on Windows, but that is a million miles from the simple approachability of Basic back in the 1980s, including BBC Basic.
Trying it online, but it also lacks some of the things our MS Basic machine did great. I can't find any other BASIC that does the these things right: offer an EDIT command for a single line of code, preferably with an edit next shortcut, and behave like a modern text editor when it comes to typing at the cursor position: insert instead of overwrite. Also I like to have basic run in lower-case by default, with shift acting normally for upper case typing, and replacing BASIC commands regardless the case to BASIC symbols (character 128-255) for compact program storage.
I love content about old technology. Helps me get a grasp of the new stuff.
Awesome stuff, I love that you tied in all my favorite other KZheadrs into this video. Great job :)
Maybe I'll be in the next one :D
I got my first computer in 1982 - a ZX Spectrum 48k. It lead to me being what I am today - a software developer still at the age of 48. BASIC gave me enthusiasm and also taught me how to program... badly - he he ;)
Who was the nutter that decided line numbers were not a good idea ? 52652 Print"This line has now been corrected" There, no need to list the whole programme to get to that line to correct it.
I first started playing the spectrum 48k when I was aged 4 back in 1986, but I could never know how to load the game so had to wait for my older sisters to come back from school so I could play Horace Goes Skiing lol
so ... if I had my first computer Amstrad CPC464, will I be a software developer at age of 64?
I had SINCLAIR IN 1982 WHILE I WORKED ON MY OWN IN BAGHDAD JUST TO PASS BOREDOM ...till i find alcohol There.
My first was a timex sinclair 1000 I ordered from the UK. Then I moved on to the 64. I once created a "crazy climber" game like the arcade game using kb symbols on the timex. I wrote so many programs but never once wanted to try and sell them. And they were huge programs of crazy confusing code that only I understood until they got so big even I got lost.
This video made me feel so proud of teaching BASIC at evening schools as a Tech guy studying computer science back in the 80's !!! :) Thanks
Those booklets of basic programs were great - it was cool to have a program you wrote appear in one too!
I remember coding in BASIC, writing my own choose-your-adventure programs, in the 1980s.
Nathan Baker that's really cool, did they use if and then functions in that language
I did that on my calculator in high school. I subsequently failed algebra that year.
@@fordtechchris SAME. then I got into mmocc's and my career was born.
I did that for my C128. I wrote a program called "Mark's Quest For Car Keys" and based it on a program printed in SoftSide Magazine called "Kidnapped". It was a layout of his house and he awoke and had to find his keys and avoid the traps/distractions placed in the rooms.
@@diourankeIF THEN and ELSE
Oh, a 60 FPS episode? I'll take that :P
That was an accident. I was half-way done editing and kept asking "why is my computer running so slow?" I even rebooted a few times. Eventually I realized it was set at 60fps, and final cut pro wouldn't allow me to change it once I had already imported everything and started editing.
The 8-Bit Guy Blame Clint haha :D
The 8-Bit Guy Hehe, been there, done that. However, there is a way to change settings in projects. I'll show you tomorrow - just got home from a trip to Denmark now. It's about time we got you a new iMac 27" to edit videos on soon. :D
I don't care for the iMac.. It sits too tall. I'm planning to buy a new Mac Mini.
+The 8-Bit Guy I have to agree with that...
This is how I learned basic programming, can’t believe it’s been that long time ago.
by watching this video?
Good times. I used to enjoy trying out BASIC as a kid. My parents even used it as a tool for me to learn the basics of mathematics.
I loved and miss Basic. Thanks for the great memories!
When I was in high school (1999) I wrote a painting program in similar to MS paint but with more features in BASIC for MS DOS(PC) and True BASIC(MAC) for my computer programming class. I also wrote a virus that infected the schools mac lab and turned all the machines into bricks, I got banned from all computers in the school after that. Fun times, learn basic, I use it today for window scripting (VBS) and VBA projects in MS Excel/Access/Word/etc....
I'll learn it to code games for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems using smilebasic!
Bradley Schlangen and then everyone clapped
Wow that’s edgy
Ok Bradley, so let's see here, you showed skill and aptitude at something, and their response was to ban you. They should have put you in charge of the computers instead, that's a much tougher challenge, and a better way to tap your potential. Academia doesn't change.
I got in trouble in CAD class when I figured out how get access to the office computer files over the network. ha ha. I wasnt smart enough to know they could see my computer id as cad13. The high school IT lady walked right up to me... oops.
I self-taught myself Sinclair Basic for the ZX Spectrum and got so advanced with the graphics and programming, I coded my own games for people to now download and share. BASIC was the first language I learned how to code.
I need to do a presentation and demo of basic for my comparative language class, and this was a fantastic source of background information. Did not think I would be using you as a source at some point in my college career XD.
i like seeing all of you nerds all in one video
“... when I get a new ‘old’ computer, I try something in basic...”. Exactly what I’ve been up to lately. Great video.
Love this channel! But it’s almost 5am and I can’t sleep, this should do the trick!
You are 100% right. Me, as a younger person, romanticizes these old systems. We had IT at school and all we learnt was word processing and powerpoints whereas my uncle got to learn Basic at school. I did teach myself basic and used to program in QBasic 7.1. There was even a community - QB4All that I actively participated in. Great content!
The Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Interchange Code was the first computer language that I learned--in 1979-1980. The memories that this brings back!
I suspect lots of commenters don't realize that's an acronym ;-)
I was taught basic in the early 2010s in high school, in Italy.
I was born in 2010 and still love old tecknology and i dream of trying a real commodore 64 or a real Vic-20. I have wated this for a Long time but all i can find are Just emulators
a woman! ah, but you said 2010, ok then :)
@@BestFirmwareAround "a woman" why does that matter lmao
@@j.j.ennder3243 because in italy (especially) women hardly were into computers, at least up to 2000 or so
@@BestFirmwareAround but wasn't it standard practice for anyone in school, male or female, to learn some basic? Maybe Italy is more traditional than I originally thought
in 1982, my father took me to a "Home Computer" show, I was 10 and in absolute heaven, there were IBMs, Atari's, BBC Micro's, Acorns and all sorts of fruits that I've forgotten.. as a surprise, my dad bought me a.... Commodore Vic20... the only obsolete computer on show... I loved that damned thing and it was still beautifully boxed with my backup tapes until around 2003 when my sister cleared the junk out of the house and threw it away!!!!
i bought the micro series for my boys , i found just as much fun going through them as my boys , after we read a chapter , we would all hunker down an do the programs just to see where we went from there . my boys are now in their 30's now . great memories . thanks
This brought back a lot of fond memories where my 11 year old self learned how to program. I didn't necessarily understand at the time what I was doing, but it was enough to write my own text-based games based on what I learned. I even had loading bars (using inverse space characters) -- which did nothing! Because I thought loading bars were needed to have a good game haha. Thanks for this episode :)
I totally did the same thing with the loading screens, except i copied the whole "Stars shooting through space" graphic from my BASIC manual and just located the words "Loading, please wait..." in the middle with a 5-10 second timer :) Completely unnecessary ^_^
I was in the first programming class my high school offered... way way back in the Elder Days. We had to punch our BASIC programs onto paper tape with a TTY machine, then dial into a mainframe to run it. Blazing fast 110 baud acoustic modem. :) But at least we didn't have to walk 10 miles through the snow to get to the teletype machine. :)
My school didn't 'teach' it when I was there - had to go to after-school computer club for that ! And the computer room ? Not a classroom but the maths department store cupboard - with a 6 foot slide rule in the corner !
It was the same setup for me, except that programming was slotted into a few weeks of 10th grade Algebra. I didn’t learn much algebra after that, because I kept thinking about programming. In quiet moments, I can still hear the Teletype Model 33.
Awesome video!! Thanks for the nostalgia! I'm from Argentina, In 1990 my dad bought a Pentium 286 pc that had QBasic included!! I had (and have) no idea of programming but it was so intuitive that made me dream about creating my own games! 😅 thanks again for taking so much time and effort in this, and... deluxe featurings!!❤❤
Was taught Basic at school in 1977/78, on an ICL 1904 mainframe the school had access to via a very slow acoustic coupler/phone connection. We also could send off coding forms to the local polytechnic, and a week later we would receive a printout of the execution, and a deck of punched cards. Happy days!
21:36 Don’t we all. Also, his laugh is always contagious to me, I don’t know why.
I giggled with glee when I saw your video in my feed.
This is a blast from the past! I spent a few summers in 1980’s programming basic games on a C 64
9:35 "10 REM Scramble" - I Love That Song! Such a great band :D
BASIC is and was so awesome for beginners, because it was very limited. For the same reason, 6502 assembly language is probably the best choice if one wants to learn assembly language, because it's not overwhelming and pretty limited compared to other processor languages of the time, like the z80 for example
Lol. Type, run and watch those "errors" come in....fond memories!
My first BASIC book too!! Brings back memories as I had a TRS-80 and boy did it take along time to type it in! Especially when your sister pulls out the power cord. I now code in R and Python but BASIC was excellent for its time and it introduced lots of kids to coding without having to tackle machine-code.
I love this! I remember writing the hell outta BASICS back in the days. Good times
I live in argentina, ergo, most technology came here years later until late 80's; so we still had to code our games an programmes through (mostly) magazines and stuff. The thing is that I remember that back in the day there was a tv programm about computers that played "code" as audio after the show. you could record it on MC and have it play on your c64 and you got a game / programm. distribution via tv / audio!!! that blew my mind. Could you make a video on how that worked?
... as done recently on Netflix's Black Mirror 'Bandersnatch' interactive video (one video clip has a Spectrum program to download).
It worked the same way the cassette programs worked on like an Apple II or C64. If you can receive the audio through whatever transmission medium, you've got the program. Didn't matter if it was a physical cassette or not. You can connect your modern PC to your Apple today with an audio patch cable, play back a WAV capture of an old tape and the Apple will load it. It doesn't know the difference.
9:30 YO! I just found that exact computer in my basement! Now I can type something with it. Thanks 8-bit-guy!