An interesting (though more than occasionally dry) recent read on the
development of Kemeny and Kurtz' BASIC and its associated infrastructure
and expanding network(s) in the '60s (well before my time) and on into
the '70s (more my time).

~~~~~~~~~~~

A People’s History of Computing in the United States
Joy Lisi Rankin

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press,
2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009562 | ISBN 9780674970977

1 When Students Taught the Computer 12
2 Making a Macho Computing Culture 38
3 Back to BASICs 66
4 The Promise of Computing Utilities and the Proliferation of Networks 106
5 How The Oregon Trail Began in Minnesota 139
6 PLATO Builds a Plasma Screen 166
7 PLATO’s Republic (or, the Other ARPANET) 193
Epilogue; From Personal Computing to Personal Computers

"There was an amazing world of personal computing, social computing,
and networked computing—all before 1975—and there is so much more
to learn about how those worlds became the ... digital culture that
we recognize today."

--
Anyone, who using social-media (though not today of course), forms an
opinion regarding anything other than the relative cuteness of this or
that puppy-dog, needs seriously to examine their critical thinking.

On Tuesday, October 5, 2021 at 11:29:56 AM UTC+13, Mark Daniel wrote:
> An interesting (though more than occasionally dry) recent read on the
> development of Kemeny and Kurtz' BASIC and its associated infrastructure
> and expanding network(s) in the '60s (well before my time) and on into
> the '70s (more my time).

They tried to sell “True BASIC” as a product for the IBM PC, but most people had become accustomed to Microsoft’s dialect, and found the “True” form too much of a shift.

There was one BASIC dialect that, looking back, seemed quite interesting (not that I knew about it at the time): it was called “GRASS”, or there was a version specifically for a Z80-based machine, called “ZGRASS”.

It had no line numbers, function/subroutine bodies were held in string variables, and it also had foreground and background threading. All pretty sophisticated for, what was it, 1978?

You can find docs online at Bitsavers -- see the pdf/datamax/ and pdf/nuttingAssoc/ directories.

On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-7, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

(snip)
> There was one BASIC dialect that, looking back, seemed quite interesting
> (not that I knew about it at the time): it was called “GRASS”, or there was
> a version specifically for a Z80-based machine, called “ZGRASS”.
>
> It had no line numbers, function/subroutine bodies were held in string
> variables, and it also had foreground and background threading.
> All pretty sophisticated for, what was it, 1978?

There is also BASIC09 from about 1980 that also doesn't have line
numbers, or at least not on most lines. It has the usual structured
programming system that doesn't need them, but I believe it still
has GOTO if you want it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC09

That is for OS/9, originally on the 6809, and later 68000.

On 05/10/2021 10:41, gah4 wrote:
> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-7, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
>
> (snip)
>> There was one BASIC dialect that, looking back, seemed quite interesting
>> (not that I knew about it at the time): it was called “GRASS”, or there was
>> a version specifically for a Z80-based machine, called “ZGRASS”.
>>
>> It had no line numbers, function/subroutine bodies were held in string
>> variables, and it also had foreground and background threading.
>> All pretty sophisticated for, what was it, 1978?
>
> There is also BASIC09 from about 1980 that also doesn't have line
> numbers, or at least not on most lines. It has the usual structured
> programming system that doesn't need them, but I believe it still
> has GOTO if you want it.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC09
>
> That is for OS/9, originally on the 6809, and later 68000.
>
>
DEC BASIC required a minimum of (IIRC) one line number.
A common story was of a programer who wrote:
1 ! Todays date
32767 end

and then reported to his manager "The program is ready, except for some routines in the middle."

--
Mike R.
Home: http://alpha.mike-r.com/
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and: http://alpha.mike-r.com/jargon/T/top-post.html
Missile address: N31.7624/E34.9691

On 05/10/2021 11:06, Henry Crun wrote:

> DEC BASIC required a minimum of (IIRC) one line number.
> A common story was of a programer who wrote:
> 1 ! Todays date
> 32767 end
>
> and then reported to his manager "The program is ready, except for some
> routines in the middle."
>
DEC Basic did not later need any line numbers. If you wanted to use the
(why?) you had to have one at the top

I recall when I had an Atari ST in the 80s the supplied Basic (on disk)
was useless, so I ended up buying a ROM cartridge that had (ISTR) Fast
Basic, which was an outstandingly modern procedural Basic that didn't
use line numbers, and provided a good base when later moving onto DEC
Basic in the 90s. Sadly when I sold the ST and bought a PC I was stuck
with the horrible GW Basic from MS

--
Chris