The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

Re:The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983 by m463 on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:36AM (#23270593)

Wow, pretty good. I mentioned that because the first source file I pulled up was a circle drawing routine written in assembler.

I wrote a routine to do it once for fun -- in python -- and it took me some time to get it right. I also had access to wikipedia and stack overflow, so I was able to get the integer method going with guidance.

for example, the middle of the main loop was:

  x += 1
  if d > 0:
      y -= 1
      d = d + 4 * (x - y) + 10
  else:
      d = d + 4 * x + 6

(btw I was doing this not to draw a circle as much as draw a moon)

But when I read the source code I thought... writing geewhiz basic would take a long time now, let alone 1975 when there was no instantaneous communication of acm papers and computers were rare and graphical computers rarer.

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Re:The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983 by vidarh on Friday May 22, 2020 @09:06AM (#23271581)

It's one of those things where you relatively quickly get used to a specific way of thinking, and while we didn't have instantaneous communications of papers, we did have endless numbers of computer magazines with actual listings in them that often also discussed fairly in depth algorithms.

Mostly it boils down to learning patterns for common things, and things like basic trig replacement was a staple of the demo scene.

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