Talk:Microsoft BASIC

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[edit] BASIC lineage doubts

Seriously, are all of those REALLY versions of Microsoft BASIC?

I'm wondering at least about:

  1. Amiga BASIC (Commodore Amiga)
  2. Applesoft BASIC (Apple II family)
  3. Commodore BASIC (CBM 8-bit family, incl C64)

timl

Yep, all the listed BASICs are descendants of MS BASIC; I've done some research on all of them to check this (not too much work really, just surfing to the relevant websites for the BASICs I wasn't familiar with from before). Curious you should mention CBM BASIC by the way -- it was the first home computer BASIC licenced from Microsoft (1977), with the PET beating the Apple II by a short amount of time (I'm excluding the MITS Altair here, since it could hardly be called a home computer; rather a microcomputer kit for seriously involved hobbyists). --Wernher 16:58, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There are allegations that Microsoft BASIC was hacked from a stolen DEC BASIC. Bill Gates has been asked to release the source code for his original BASIC, partly out of general curiosity, partly to see if this allegation has any truth in it. He has never released this source code.

However, it is available in the Pusey library at Harvard: here is a annotated disassembly: http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/altair/index2.html 150.101.166.15 (talk) 09:44, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I, too, second that suspicion of BASIC language heritage. The proverbial citation is needed. At least once in the whole article. Hosiah (talk) 23:36, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Skipping over a long time in history in just one paragraph

I just wanted to say that the whole text is about the good old times when computers were actually (4, 8 or 16 kbyte RAM) + (4,8 or 16 kbyte ROM) programmable calculators There are mentioned memory sizes measured in kbytes

At that time I was using time on a CDC 7600, a 1970s super computer, which had around 200 K of RAM. So even 'serious' computers had small amounts of RAM. UNIX was developed on a PDP 8 with c. 4 K of RAM, in the late 1960s. My programmable calculator then had 31 bytes of RAM. By the time of the HP-41, when programmable calculators had kB of RAM, the other differentiator was the display - one-line on a calculator, 23+ on a computer. No graphics on a calculator; graphics on a computer.

But in the last paragraph there is mentioned C#, .NET and other technologies from the Gigabyte era (when both Ram and Harddisk is in gigabytes)

To jump from kilobyte era (1970s~1980s) straight to gigabyte era (2000s) is too big skip

I think many things in between are missing - about GWBASIC, QBASIC and so on. How the features of BASIC grew up and so on

I didn't think Microsoft BASIC supported long variable names. You could use long names, but only the first two characters were significant. Thus, A10 and A11 were the same variable. Once you realised this you stopped confusing yourself by using 'long' names - they took up RAM and caused confusion, no more.

QBASIC is still included with some versions of Windows XP, so the statement in the article that it is no longer included is not entirely correct. For example, type "qbasic" at the Run window on any Korean language Windows XP system and you'll get QBASIC. I don't know why it's no longer included in the English version, but the English version of Windows XP is not the only version in existence.