Just saw this URL on http://www.nu.nl, about the fact that BASIC has been around for 20 years now, and guess from which Basic they took a screenshot:

http://www.nu.nl/news.jsp?n=316047&c=50

thank god they didn't post a screenshot with:

LET S=0
LET T=0
etc.

that would look kinda lame

What's the most remarkable is that it's a MSXPLAYer shot!
And BTW, the article is about BASIC being around for 40 years, not 20.

Cool!!!

really cool!!

Quote:

What's the most remarkable is that it's a MSXPLAYer shot! And BTW, the article is about BASIC being around for 40 years, not 20.

Indeed, my bad

I read somewhere (long time ago) that the very first basic only had about 20 commands orso (or maybe even less!)... does anyone have any idea which commands those were?

that would be a very BASIC BASIC

Well, naturally the first basic didn't have things like sprite-commands, draw commands (no gfx on early computers), sound commands etc.

But even a minimum set of commands:
IF
THEN
ELSE
FOR
NEXT
END
GOTO
GOSUB
RETURN
PRINT
LOCATE
INPUT

etc. .. that's 12 already, and there's not much to enjoy execpt for the basic program flow and some primitive text I/O . But really, I read it somewhere, dunno where and when. But the first basic's commandset was really nothing special!

Quite cool indeed. Especially the MSXPLAYer screenie they used. It seems they're really into the MSX-Revival.

Quote:

thank god they didn't post a screenshot with: LET S=0 LET T=0 etc. that would look kinda lame

Maybe it would be in this case, but there were BASIC variants that required the LET to set a variable. And MSX-BASIC does support the LET statement for that very same purpose.

SUPER!

I'd say that calls for a celebration tune! Here's a basic setup:


Basic was my first love, and it will be my last
Basic of the future, and Basic of the past..
To live without my Basic, would be impossible to do do
In this world of C++, my Basic pulls me through..

<I'd put some musical intermezzo here>

Basic was my first love, and it will be my last
Basic of the future, and Basic of the past..
and Basic of the past..
and Basic of the past..

<lotsa reverb on 'past'>

<another -large- musical intermezzo here>

Basic was my first love, and it will be my last
Basic of the future, and Basic of the past..
To live without my Basic, would be impossible to do
In this world of C++, my Basic pulls me through..

<strings, brass, percussion and piano here>


Now, isn't that a great idea? The text is somewhat simple, I think I could make a tune about 5:56 around this

Definately worth the effort! I'm looking forward to hearing the result of it! (I hope the text is sampled, your Moonsound has 640kB of sample RAM, am I right? )

I think the implication that actually Windows is written in a BASIC dialect is somewhat cool... Hahaha, CyberSoft once made an MSX version of Windows (MSX Windows 98 iirc) which even made it to Japan! Probably because it was written in BASIC as well