* OT: the story of bywater basic
@ 2017-04-27 15:47 Ethan Grammatikidis
2017-04-27 16:02 ` [9front] " Stanley Lieber
0 siblings, 1 reply; 4+ messages in thread
From: Ethan Grammatikidis @ 2017-04-27 15:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: 9front
i just found this and thought it might amuse some of the minds here.
8. THE STORY OF BYWATER BASIC
This program was originally begun in 1982 by my grandmother, Mrs.
Verda Spell of Beaumont, TX. She was writing the program using
an ANSI C compiler on an Osborne I CP/M computer and although my
grandfather (Lockwood Spell) had bought an IBM PC with 256k of
RAM my grandmother would not use it, paraphrasing George Herbert
to the effect that "He who cannot in 64k program, cannot in 512k."
She had used Microsoft BASIC and although she had nothing against
it she said repeatedly that she didn't understand why Digital
Research didn't "sue the socks off of Microsoft" for version 1.0
of MSDOS and so I reckon that she hoped to undercut Microsoft's
entire market and eventually build a new software empire on
the North End of Beaumont. Her programming efforts were cut
tragically short when she was thrown from a Beaumont to Port
Arthur commuter train in the summer of 1986. I found the source
code to bwBASIC on a single-density Osborne diskette in her knitting
bag and eventually managed to have it all copied over to a PC
diskette. I have revised it slightly prior to this release. You
should know, though, that I myself am an historian, not a programmer.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/bwbasic/
version 2.2 is simple but slow and rather featureless. i didn't look at newer versions. the only reason i'm looking at it at all is because it came my way via freedos and can run programs like a shell. if anyone feels a desperate need for basic under plan 9 (lol), it should compile with any ansi c compiler.
--
Linux? I used ext4 for a few years. In proportion to the time spent using it, I lost as much data to it as I lost to the very worst released version of reiserfs.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: [9front] OT: the story of bywater basic
2017-04-27 15:47 OT: the story of bywater basic Ethan Grammatikidis
@ 2017-04-27 16:02 ` Stanley Lieber
2017-05-16 12:26 ` Ethan Grammatikidis
0 siblings, 1 reply; 4+ messages in thread
From: Stanley Lieber @ 2017-04-27 16:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: 9front
> I reckon that she hoped to undercut Microsoft's
> entire market and eventually build a new software empire on
> the North End of Beaumont.
[...]
> Her programming efforts were cut
> tragically short when she was thrown from a Beaumont to Port
> Arthur commuter train in the summer of 1986.
No relation.
sl
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: [9front] OT: the story of bywater basic
2017-04-27 16:02 ` [9front] " Stanley Lieber
@ 2017-05-16 12:26 ` Ethan Grammatikidis
0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Ethan Grammatikidis @ 2017-05-16 12:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: 9front
On Thu, Apr 27, 2017, at 05:02 PM, Stanley Lieber wrote:
> > I reckon that she hoped to undercut Microsoft's
> > entire market and eventually build a new software empire on
> > the North End of Beaumont.
>
> [...]
>
> > Her programming efforts were cut
> > tragically short when she was thrown from a Beaumont to Port
> > Arthur commuter train in the summer of 1986.
>
> No relation.
>
> sl
>
haha!
--
Linux? I used ext4 for a few years. In proportion to the time spent using it, I lost as much data to it as I lost to the very worst released version of reiserfs.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: [9front] OT: the story of bywater basic
@ 2017-05-01 23:05 cinap_lenrek
0 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: cinap_lenrek @ 2017-05-01 23:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: 9front
release material:
aiju → cinap_lenrek: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/7b/44/36/7b4436e553cc0028bf853d15927eb362.jpg
lemme know when you have time...
--
cinap
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2017-05-16 12:26 UTC | newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2017-04-27 15:47 OT: the story of bywater basic Ethan Grammatikidis
2017-04-27 16:02 ` [9front] " Stanley Lieber
2017-05-16 12:26 ` Ethan Grammatikidis
2017-05-01 23:05 cinap_lenrek
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).