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At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall, Professor John Kemeny and a student programmer simultaneously typed RUN on neighboring terminals. When they both got back correct answers to their simple programs, time-sharing and BASIC were born. Those innovations made computing accessible to all Dartmouth students and faculty, and soon after, to people across the nation and the world.
Dartmouth's BASIC at 50 anniversary celebration was held yesterday, which included the public premier of a documentary on the history and impact of BASIC.
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New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by BasilBrush on Thursday May 01 2014, @12:49PM
But they are still there. Which means that you have't learned the language unless you learn them. There is a sense of having "Mastered" the language that they wouldn't get with Javascript. Go through the relatively thin classic "Illustrating BASIC" by Donald Alcock and that was it. From no computer knowledge you had mastered a programming language. My BBC Micro came with a manual called "30 Hour BASIC", and that was realistic timing.
Also only learning a subset of Javascript means that you probably can't understand other peoples source, because you don't know all the features they use. Learn BASIC and you can follow any BASIC program.
This really was one of the great things about the 8-Bit home computer with BASIC era. That you had a feeling of something you could master.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 01 2014, @01:22PM
I think you make a confusion between learning to program and mastering a programming language (the later is, at best, a mean for the former). "Mastering BASIC" will only get you to brain-rot in regards with "learning programming". Even more dangerous if "mastering BASIC" comes with a feeling of self-satisfaction and sufficiency.
Remember the '97-'00 (the .com bubble)? Every "programmer" and his dog were paid fortunes only because they could say "they knew how to program in Visual Basic 6.0"; how good was that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by BasilBrush on Thursday May 01 2014, @02:20PM
I think you make a confusion between learning to program and mastering a programming language (the later is, at best, a mean for the former).
I'm not the slightest bit confused. I said it's just a stepping stone (in the never ending journey of learning to program), but mastering the BASIC language is a good self contained step. One which brings a feeling of having completeness, whether you then go on to study programming further, or take a different path in life.
Remember the '97-'00 (the .com bubble)? Every "programmer" and his dog were paid fortunes only because they could say "they knew how to program in Visual Basic 6.0"; how good was that?
I'm not talking about Visual BASIC. And those "programmers" wouldn't have been any more use if they'd learned a non-object & non-library subset of Javascript instead.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!