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Re: Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC

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On 2014-09-02, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
> http://prog21.dadgum.com/198.html
>
>  It's hard to separate the language and the computers it ran it on;
>  flipping the power switch, even without a disk drive attached,
>  resulted in a BASIC prompt. If nothing else, it could be treated as
>  a calculator: PRINT "seconds in a week: ",60*60*24*7 or PRINT
>  COS(2)/2 Notice how the cosine function is always available for
>  use. No importing a library. No qualifying it with MATH.TRIG.

I definitely do miss turning on a machine and having a workable system
one second later.  Yeah I know, modern machines do more, blah blah blah,
but instantaneous gratification was pretty fun.  Also cartridges.
Imagine modern hardware with a cartridge slot - how fun!  (They exist.
They're called hot-swappable SCSI drives, or maybe boot from /dev/sdb
usb drives, or equivalent).

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Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-02 09:57 +0000
  Re: Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2014-09-02 12:25 +0100
  Re: Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> - 2014-09-02 19:19 +0100
  Re: Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-09-02 18:21 +0000
    Re: Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> - 2014-09-02 20:51 +0100
      Re: Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-09-02 22:58 +0300
        Re: Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-02 22:20 +0200
        Re: Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC Bruce Horrocks <07.013@scorecrow.com> - 2014-09-04 00:21 +0100
          Re: Lost Lessons from 8-Bit BASIC Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-09-04 08:44 +0300

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