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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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(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Thursday May 01 2014, @01:00PM
One thing I feel makes a good first stepping stone is learning to write C or C++ for an Arduino. The reference page [arduino.cc] is well designed and the example programs show you how to use the syntax. It's exciting for beginners to see their code effecting something in the real world, rather than just print stuff to the terminal. The Arduino guys have gone to some lengths to hide stuff like pointers and function declarations, so it's easy to get started. For those who are interested, it's not hard to graduate to "real" C or C++ without the Arduino training wheels.
(Score: 1) by BasilBrush on Thursday May 01 2014, @02:24PM
Even better are boards based on the Parallax Propeller. There's a dedicated language called SPIN that's very BASIC like whilst also providing very nice low level bit twiddling opportunities. And at a more advanced level, the best introduction to parallel programming anywhere, with a simple to use 32 bit ASM.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Thursday May 01 2014, @02:39PM
Ah, I see, the multiple cores look interesting. Personally I have no desire to learn another language right now, it's good to see they have a C and C++ compiler. Maybe I'll buy one and have a play with it.