[COFF] A couple thoughts about BASIC

[COFF] A couple thoughts about BASIC

[Adam Thornton]

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I was one of those 80s kids who grew up with 6502s with BASIC in ROM.

Yeah, I learned some bad habits from that, but they weren't that hard to
unlearn, and they, at the very least, got me screwing around with computers
and figuring out how to make them do what I wanted.

It's been my career for three and a half decades now, so I'm not gonna
complain.

A couple decades later we had PHP for the web, which did almost exactly the
same thing: made the barrier to entry, for getting stuff you wanted to see
on the screen actually show up there, really low.  And yeah, a bunch of
people wrote a bunch of terrible web pages, but at least some of them, I'll
wager, got inspired by that to learn more and do better.

Sneering at BASIC is exactly the same sort of irritating
privileged-ivory-tower BS that The Unix-Hater's Handbook and the cult of
ITS represent.  Sure, in some perfect world, people would learn better
habits and have access to more capable (and therefore grossly more
expensive) machines, but in the world in which we actually live, a
really-low-barrier-to-entry for smart kids without tons of money is a
lovely democratizing force.

Here endeth the rant.

Adam

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[COFF] Re: A couple thoughts about BASIC

[G. Branden Robinson]

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At 2024-11-23T16:07:15-0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
> I was one of those 80s kids who grew up with 6502s with BASIC in ROM.

I was Z80 and M6809.  The rivalries back then were serious business. ;-)

> Yeah, I learned some bad habits from that, but they weren't that hard
> to unlearn, and they, at the very least, got me screwing around with
> computers and figuring out how to make them do what I wanted.

The ease with which you could lock up the machine for force a reset by
causing a processor fault--no hardware traps on these guys--made a
pretty severe instructor.

> A couple decades later we had PHP for the web, which did almost
> exactly the same thing: made the barrier to entry, for getting stuff
> you wanted to see on the screen actually show up there, really low.

PHP was what I had to deal with for my first paying gig during the
golden age of "e-commerce".  Even as naïve as I was back then (some
say I am still), I recognized a language that was dangerously sloppy.

I recall that PHP had a stretch that resembled the legendary Sendmail
Root Hole of the Week.

> And yeah, a bunch of people wrote a bunch of terrible web pages, but
> at least some of them, I'll wager, got inspired by that to learn more
> and do better.
> 
> Sneering at BASIC is exactly the same sort of irritating
> privileged-ivory-tower BS that The Unix-Hater's Handbook and the cult
> of ITS represent.

Acknowledged, but there _is_ some funny stuff in TUHH.  Will programming
culture ever manage to simultaneously avoid both the greener-grass _and_
the drinking-one's-own-Kool-Aid fallacies?

If RMS's is an example of ITS cult humor, it's pretty weak sauce.

> Sure, in some perfect world, people would learn better habits and have
> access to more capable (and therefore grossly more expensive)
> machines, but in the world in which we actually live, a
> really-low-barrier-to-entry for smart kids without tons of money is a
> lovely democratizing force.

Everybody has a smart phone.  That could be a democratizing force (and
has been, in some contexts).  Unfortunately smart phone platforms are
locked-down, walled-garden environments for the "delivery" of
"services" and exfiltration of enormous tranches of personal
information for the convenience of advertisers, law enforcement, and
intelligence agencies of every country.

But it seems like the price threshold is no longer a problem.  Maybe
what we need is a completely hackable convergence device that you can
plug into any commodity TV, keyboard, and thumb drive and go.  No need
to build a radio into it.  Let that be an optional external peripheral.

Maybe this already exists and I'm just not aware of it, or maybe all the
VCs of the world have decided that there's "no market" for them.

I haven't priced out FPGAs recently, but hackability all the way down to
the gate level seems like a terrific thing to unleash the next
generation of kids on.  We could have a self-taught Nisan and Schocken
on every block.

Regards,
Branden

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[COFF] Re: A couple thoughts about BASIC

[Adam Thornton]

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On Sat, Nov 23, 2024 at 5:27 PM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> At 2024-11-23T16:07:15-0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
> > I was one of those 80s kids who grew up with 6502s with BASIC in ROM.
>
> I was Z80 and M6809.  The rivalries back then were serious business. ;-)
>

Ah, a Radio Shack aficionado, I presume.



>
> But it seems like the price threshold is no longer a problem.  Maybe
> what we need is a completely hackable convergence device that you can
> plug into any commodity TV, keyboard, and thumb drive and go.  No need
> to build a radio into it.  Let that be an optional external peripheral.
>
>
That would be a Raspberry Pi.  SD card rather than thumb drive, but...$75
(I mean, I have a $9-many-years-ago thing that ran Linux, so it could be
cheaper, certainly, but a fairly fast ARM with several GB of memory is $75)
gets you...plug in the sd card, keyboard, mouse, and HDMI (newer Pis
require a Micro-HDMI to HDMI adapter, which is like another $5 or $10), and
you've got a fully functional Linux machine.  One would think that it
wouldn't be too hard to build an OLPC-like environment for it (it probably
already exists).

I'm amazed at how ubiquitous Pis are in the control system for the
telescope I work on, but maybe I shouldn't be.  After all: it's $75 for a
general-purpose Linux box with a bunch of GPIO pins to play with.  That's a
lot cheaper than designing a custom hardware anything.

Adam

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[COFF] Re: A couple thoughts about BASIC

[segaloco via COFF]

On Saturday, November 23rd, 2024 at 4:27 PM, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> At 2024-11-23T16:07:15-0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
> 
> > A couple decades later we had PHP for the web, which did almost
> > exactly the same thing: made the barrier to entry, for getting stuff
> > you wanted to see on the screen actually show up there, really low.
> 
> 
> PHP was what I had to deal with for my first paying gig during the
> golden age of "e-commerce". Even as naïve as I was back then (some
> say I am still), I recognized a language that was dangerously sloppy.
> 
> Regards,
> Branden

I did some volunteer PHP work for a local non-profit for a while, was my first and really only significant exposure to it.  The recurring phenomenon I found was that it seems that nobody agrees on best practices or canonical ways to do literally anything.  The educational resources and library components out there are such a hodge podge it's a wonder that there are any functionally adequate PHP-driven sites out there at all.  I gave up on trying to get a feel for what best practices cropped up in the community and instead just religiously studied the documentation instead.  That may have started my trend of foregoing secondary sources on programming and referring almost exclusively to reference manuals and my own intuition.

It's a shame because the idea behind PHP is obviously one that has stuck around, what with other languages also featuring weird mishmash HTML and structured procedural code, although nowadays with the popularity of doing almost everything in client-side scripting, I wonder how PHP is going to adapt in the coming decade or two.  Plus given the growing popularity of JS server-side engines, the playing field PHP enjoyed a wide berth in is becoming more crowded.

Just speaking as someone who did some PHP, didn't really have any major qualms with the language, but finds there is a lot to be desired in the quality of educational materials out there...  However, the same could probably be said about a lot of languages, especially those meant for "pick up and go" because that doesn't always translate to "pick up and go /correctly/".  I'm just glad I had so much programming experience under my belt before I touched PHP, it would be far too easy to pick up bad patterns and then carry those into other realms...

- Matt G.