Born To RUN: Dartmouth Throwing BASIC a 50th B-Day Party

theodp writes: "Still hanging on to a dog-eared copy of BASIC Computer Games? Back issues of Creative Computing? Well then, Bunky, mark your calendar for April 30th, because Dartmouth College is throwing BASIC a 50th birthday party that you won't want to miss! From the 'invite' to BASIC at 50: '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. Kemeny, who later became Dartmouth's 13th president, Professor Tom Kurtz, and a number of undergraduate students worked together to revolutionize computing with the introduction of time-sharing and the BASIC programming language. Their innovations made computing accessible to all Dartmouth students and faculty, and soon after, to people across the nation and the world [video — young Bill Gates cameo @2:18]. This year, Dartmouth is celebrating 50 years of BASIC with a day of events on Wednesday, April 30. Please join us as we recognize the enduring impact of BASIC, showcase innovation in computing at Dartmouth today, and imagine what the next 50 years may hold.' Be sure to check out the vintage photos on Flickr to see what real cloud computing looks like, kids!"

Comments

We've come a long way

[Chrisq]

We've come a long way from the original BASIC to VisualBasic.NET, which is basically C# with a BASIC type syntax.

Re:We've come a long way

[Chrisq]

Yes very much so. And VB.Net still puts people off because of that long history. Even though it's pretty much exactly the same functionality as C#. Last I checked, it has some features C# didn't have, the biggest of which is better background compiling. You can add entire classes with actually compiling your project, and Intellisense will work. Maybe C# will do that now, but VB.Net has basically always had this feature.

A developer who converted a lot of VB code from VB7 to .NET said that one difference with C# is that typing is more strictly enforced at compile time. After testing on a sample he discovered that porting to VB.NET was quicker, but converting to C# discovered some obscure bugs in the original code - some of which had work-arounds applied as they had ever been fully understood. We went for the port to C# with the result that the ported application was more stable than the original.

Memories

[kria]

I remember as a child reading BASIC programs out of Compute Magazine for my dad to type in on our TI computer. That likely means I was reading code before I read my first real novel, which is amusing.

I try not to admit at work that I've had to learn VBA for Excel for a tool we use.

Re:Memories

[postbigbang]

Maybe you should GOTO the event.

Re:Memories

[invictusvoyd]

And have spaghetti for breakfast

Re:Memories

[SigmundFloyd]

Maybe you should GOTO the event.

But then he can't RETURN...

BASIC is where M$ got its start

[tepples]

If you wonder why people abbreviate Microsoft as M$ in articles, consider that Microsoft got its start as a developer of BASIC for 8-bit home computers, including every Apple II computer from the Apple II Plus through the IIGS, IIc Plus, and Macintosh LC with IIe Card. The FAT file system also started with a Microsoft BASIC; Tim Paterson incorporated it into the 86-DOS that he would later sell to Microsoft. And in this early era, before DEFSTR and DIM ... AS, all string variable names ended with a $, just as names of scalar variables in Perl would later start with $. The following is a BASIC program:

10 LET M$ = "Microsoft"
20 PRINT M$;" introduces BASIC"
30 END

(That and the $ helps to distinguish Microsoft from multiple sclerosis.)

Re:Posts like these

[dcw3]

Funny. You care enough to post. Maybe, unlike many of us here, you didn't cut your teeth on it, and it's not of interest to you. But, unlike you, I had my first programming class in high school in the early 70s, and have fond memories of acoustic modems, hooked to teletypes, and punching out our programs on the paper tape unit attached to them. Maybe you'd consider those of us from that era to be dinosaurs. I have one thing to say to that...get the fuck off my lawn whippersnapper!

Re:Posts like these

[gstoddart]

Maybe you just don't have a very good grasp on who "most people here" are.

If "most people here" care neither about the 50th anniversary of BASIC nor of time-sharing on computers ... one might argue that "most people here" aren't actually the target audience for Slashdot.

That's like saying on an aviation forum nobody cares about the Wright Brothers's place in history.