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Socoder -> On Topic -> BASIC - Programming language of yesterdays? |
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| Mon, 07 Jul 2025, 13:34 | |
Jayenkai
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I'm not 100% sure what's coming in the future. The A.I. revolution is changing things at a seriously rapid pace. I think if you're a hobbyist, then that's probably just fine. The keyboard and the flashing cursor will always be ready and raring to go. But if you're looking for a job, honestly, if you can find a "trade", then that might not be a bad idea. We're getting to the point where we can ask the chatbots for help and suggestions, and sometimes it'll randomly decide to spit out entire projects on a whim, instead of "this little function I need help with".. It's kinda crazy just how fast that sort of thing is coming for us. I wouldn't rely on being able to code as a way to make money, any more. As far as teaching kids goes. BASIC still has a very logical "a to b to c" methodology to it, so .. personally, I still think it's a great way to understand logic and things like that. But .. if we're honest.. there's better ways to do that, too. There's those modern GUI-driven "languages", where you drag and drop commands and variables and objects and link things together. Personally I find them horribly messy, and they always seem to end up as literal spaghetti, which is infinitely worse than anything I've seen in BASIC over the years! But.. yeah.. not my place to grumble about that  If you can do plumbing, and someone needs a plumber, you've a job. If you can do coding, and someone needs a coder, they'll likely just ask ChatGPT.. It's not good. .. It's really not good. -=-=- ''Load, Next List!'' 
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| Mon, 07 Jul 2025, 16:57 | |
Pixel_Outlaw
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It's hard to find a job where the focus really is programming. Most professional developers spend more time scrambling trying to glue together huge monolithic frameworks than programming and they spend just as much time in meetings and other kinds of ceremonial Agile nonsense. In general, programming is about the last thing most companies are doing right now. It's not necessarily AI vs programming - they've squeezed most programming out of programming jobs for configuration instead (30 XML or JSON files instead of writing code) Even most Visual Brainsick has been removed in the US from the corporate world for C#. Things started going downhill in around 2010 for "real" programmers. If you want to stay with BASIC that's fine, but I will say that even the many BASIC dialects will stunt your growth if you try to switch languages. But if you're going to be a hobby programmer do what you want just make sure you keep growing. |
| Mon, 07 Jul 2025, 17:57 | |
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realtime |
BASIC is not dead, it evolves. Basic was created once with missions to make programming approachable for students and non nerdist. - Democratized programming—making it accessible to students and hobbyists. - Focused on readability and simplicity. - Encouraged experimentation and creativity with immediate feedback. You can still see BASIC syntax used in introduction to programming apps like scratch or google-blockly. I think it is the new place where you can find BASIC syntax in modern world. BASIC as syntax may still live in education format. the FOR syntax is the easiest syntax to introduce loop, even though it only appears in block based programming. Python: While not syntactically BASIC, it shares the same goal—simple, readable code for beginners. If we want to preserve BASIC, then we can preserve the mission, may be in the new form. I am a vibe coder, and as far as I know, you still need to understand code. I have my brother who doesn't know HTML and he ask chatGpt to create a web site and then he strugle to edit the web because he doesn't know anything about html. AI can generate code, but understanding that code is still essential AI do not replace you. Programmer that uses AI will replace you. If we want to preserve BASIC, we don’t need to cling to its exact syntax. Instead, we can: Design tools that prioritize simplicity and creativity. Promote logical thinking over memorizing syntax. Encourage exploration with instant feedback loops. JSE is a good start. -=-=- BASIK
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| Tue, 08 Jul 2025, 00:28 | |
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Pixel_Outlaw
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It's hard to define BASIC by syntax alone these days. There has been cross polination between Fortran, Algol, and later Pascal. Culturally it's always heavily Imperative and Procedural in practice using arbitrary keyword based program flow. |
| Tue, 08 Jul 2025, 01:34 | |
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realtime |
you are right, the polination. qbasic is the first basic I learn from. I thought it is the original basic. I was wrong. the syntax has been polinated. -=-=- BASIK
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| Tue, 08 Jul 2025, 02:06 | |
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Jayenkai
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During the early stages of JSE, I investigated all the various 8bit BASICs and was horrified by what I saw of C64s version. I hadn't experienced C64 BASiC up until that poking, having grown up with an Amstrad CPC, and most friends owning either BBC Micros and ZX Spectrums. By the time I upgraded to the Amiga, it was AMOS or Blitz, not Amiga BASIC. So, I'd somehow managed to skip the entire variation completely, over the years. What I saw was nothing short of horrific. And all of a sudden, every person that I'd ever heard complain about "BASIC is messy and chaotic and horrible".. that totally made sense to me. They weren't complaining about BASIC. They were complaining specifically about Microsoft BASIC... -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Thu, 17 Jul 2025, 23:17 | |
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Pixel_Outlaw
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Microsoft BASIC is nebulous today unless you mean the licensed hobby language by Gates et al. There has been Altair Basic, M BASIC, GW Basic, Quick Basic, Visual Basic, Visual Basic For Applications and Visual Basic .NET. I think Microsoft is pushing C# these days. Looks like the .Net framework pulled them out of the 1980s. (yet the clunky syntax persists) I need to look into it more but I was happy to see first class functions in the latest Visual Basic with .Net. First class functions mean functions can also be passed and used as data in variables and parameters. This is different from just having functions. You can write an algorithm for example that filters or sorts something and then lets the user pass in a function that preforms the test. This lets you write algorithms without hard coding every possible comparison. The thing that's going to prevent me from using it though outside of work is that it's very strongly bound to the Microsoft environment. Visual Suckio downloaded something like 30 GB of junk. |
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