What BASIC was, was an extremely accessible try-it-now environment that needed no installation, no setup, no environment variables, no directory structure. It was what we thought of when we thought of interpreters, as opposed to compilers. But then interpreters got all file-oriented and broken too.

SO there have been a lot of improvements since then. But some of what we lost was very, very different. And some of it was valuable in a way.

Except what you've described is exactly what I described with Bash ;)

> What BASIC was, was an extremely accessible try-it-now environment that needed no installation, no setup, no environment variables, no directory structure. It was what we thought of when we thought of interpreters, as opposed to compilers. But then interpreters got all file-oriented and broken too.

Again, all that is comparable with Bash:

1. Bash doesn't need any installation with most UNIX-like systems. But even in the rare example that Bash isn't bundled with your OS, there's the Bourne Shell (sh) or even Windows cmd.exe (for all it's faults).

2. Bash et al doesn't require any set up.

3. Environmental variables are just global OS variables and since BASIC wasn't namespaced, all variables were effectively environmental variables.

4. Directories are a file system thing, not a language thing. However it's worth noting that many BASIC systems did have a directory structure even if though (at that point) nested subdirectories didn't really exist. You could have different storage devices that were switchable (akin to changing drive letter in DOS) and you could store multiple files on an particular medium. In fact I still have a stack of floppy disks for an Amstrad CPC 464 (which ran Locamotic BASIC) in my attic that would testify to this.

5. Bash et al are interpreters.

Don't get me wrong, I romanises about the old days too. They were fun. But I don't think you can blanket say "[it's a] 20-year-old environment. Its not 'like' a lot of things" just to dismiss any arguments you dislike.

"The IDE facets that the author fondly remembers isn't part of the BASIC programming language, it's part of the command shell"

There was no such distinction. That's recasting of the facts into something understandandable today.

Know why the language keywords were so short? Because in an 8K ROM the symbol table was a significant hit on resources. Add a keyword? Means remove some other feature. It was a whole different world, with different constraints. And still it was usable, accessible, friendly even. At least when coming from nothing to a computer (instead of coming from 20 years of growth and confusing hindsight with foresight).

But that's the whole bloody point of the article. If you have an issue with that then take it up with the author rather than me.

Please also remember that the Bourne Shell is as old as BASIC micro computers. So my comparisons are of two environments of the same age rather than older systems vs modern systems (like you keep accusing me of).

And around the same time some micro computers (even the lower end ones) would support other interpreters (eg the BBC Micro supported BBC Basic, LISP, LOGO, Fortran, and a few others) and you could switch between languages like you switch shells in Linux. Which is also why I like to make the distinction between the language and the shell.

> Know why the language keywords were so short? Because in an 8K ROM the symbol table was a significant hit on resources. Add a keyword? Means remove some other feature. It was a whole different world, with different constraints. And still it was usable, accessible, friendly even.

I know - I was there. And while it's interesting, it's also irrelevant to any of mine or the authors points.

What's relevant is, modern ideas of encapsulation, object-oriented design or even structured design were not available to the inventors of early language ROMs. Nor did they have the room for such luxuries. They wrote one blob of code, probably in one large .asm file, that got the job done.

Yeah, his respect for BASIC seems misplaced at best. Take this excerpt:

There's a small detail that I skipped over: entering a multi-line program on a computer in a department store. Without starting an external editor. Without creating a file to be later loaded into the BASIC interpreter

So what? Any language with a REPL (and nowadays, that's pretty much all of them) can do that. And sure, computers don't boot up into a REPL, but a) do you really want them to? and b) as the top comment here shows, you can easily set up a computer to boot straight to a REPL.

Your other points are OK, but it really wasn't like a Bash shell. An interactive Python command-line is closer, but it's still a stretch.

I don't understand why you're discounting Python here though. Would you mind explaining to me why a REPL BASIC shell is different from a REPL Python shell aside the 20 years age gap between them?

One last thing, as I noted in an earlier comment, most of those BASIC micro computers did also support other languages and shells. The later models of the BBC Micro came with LOGO in addition to BBC BASIC and also supported Fortran, LISP and a few other languages. My Amstrad CPC 464 runs Locomotive BASIC but I also have a CP/M disk for it. And around the same time (and a even a few years earlier) there were LISP machines and other computers which booted into other language shells.

BASIC wasn't unique nor special in the regard that you're praising it for. Neither back then then nor now. What made BASIC micro computers special was how simple the language BASIC was (otherwise we'd all be looking back fondly of our Fortran or LISP machines!). And this is why I make the distinction between the shell and the language. Because there's always been and always will be a large array of similar REPL shells - the key distinction between them being the accessibility of the language.

Frankly, I'm convinced javascript is the modern equivalent to BASIC. It is even complete with some horrible brain rotting syntax. But, it does provide both an easy barrier to entry (everyone has a web browser), the ability to show your results to others, and the fact that it remains in source form allows beginners to examine how something was achieved.

    PRINT "HELLO WORLD"

    10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"

    10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
    20 PRINT "IT IS GREAT TO BE HERE"

But as I said before, there were other languages available for said machines and those had their editors as well. What you're describing isn't a unique attribute to BASIC.