social.solarpunk.au

social.solarpunk.au

vidak vidak

saw a GE advert from the late 60s that referred to their timesharing BASIC as "conversational FORTRAN"

10/10. poetry. chef's kiss.

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1A iacore@gts.1a-confer.net

@vidak then what's FORTH? more conversational BASIC?

vidak vidak
@iacore i'm not sure exactly what the roots of the FORTH programming language are... i forget now.

FORTH is certainly conversational. i am a very big fan of FORTH.

Willard Goosey goosey@mastodon.sdf.org

@vidak

I haven't properly researched it, but it's been my belief for decades that BASIC was originally designed as a FORTRAN - like quite intentionally.

And yes some of the better BASICs (HP BASIC for one) really are FORTRAN interpreters with saner I/O. 😉

vidak vidak

@goosey I am pretty sure BASIC was inspired by, based on, or attempted to simplify FORTRAN--i think we can find this in the own words of its designers.

Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🎃 💀 mdhughes@appdot.net

@goosey @vidak Kind of, the Dartmouth interactive system was meant to be for non-Engineering students, so Kemeny & Kurtz looked at a few languages including FORTRAN, before they wrote BASIC. Their previous experiments were simpler but less friendly.

Clav clavicle@cathode.church

@vidak Programmers who have only ever programmed in FORTRAN: Wow, getting real FORTRAN vibes from this language