Weblog of a “Switcher”

As I was doing my usual RSS Feed scan, I came across an article that talked about the programming language BASIC and it's use as a training tool for learning how to program personal computers.

Coding Horror: Everything I Needed to Know About Programming I Learned from BASIC:
Edsger Dijkstra had this to say about Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code:

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

Anyway, in this article I came across some old friends of mine:

Those books bring back some great memories, and some pretty sore wrists as one had to enter the "Computer Games" by hand using the keyboard. There was no Hard Disk Drives back then or even floppy drives. Just cassette tape interfaces to store programs entered for later retrieval.

The article had links to the books that must have been scanned in. Those links are:
BASIC Computer Games
More BASIC Computer Games

Just pop over to the site and check out some of the programs and their listings. Imagine having to enter all those lines of code by hand. There were inevitably typo's that had to be tracked down before saving them off to tape. Imagine how you would feel when you have all but a few lines of code in when a power failure occurred. All that work typing in those lines lost because there was no easy way to save your work like there is now.

Part of me is really glad that those days are gone, but part of me still misses them. A much simpler time. No Windows Vista, no viruses, spyware, adware, etc... No Internet either, modems at 300 baud if you were lucky! More likely 110 baud using the phone handset set into the "acoustic coupler" like the one pictured with this paragraph.

It sure is good to know that times can change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst and sometimes both.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, BASIC, language, Programming