Hopefully this note will be visible through all the astrological spam.

I was attending a course the other day when the instructor recommended visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/

Here is the page for DEC BASIC:
http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-basic-plus-2083.html

What a nerdish treat but who knew there were so many computer languages? (certainly not me, and I have been in this business since 1975)

https://neilrieck.net
https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html

On Saturday, October 28, 2023 at 9:14:48 AM UTC-5, Neil Rieck wrote:

> I was attending a course the other day when the instructor recommended visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/

I'm in there. From 26 years ago: https://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-kermit-344.html

Scott

On 10/28/2023 10:14 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
> Hopefully this note will be visible through all the astrological spam.
>
> I was attending a course the other day when the instructor recommended visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
>
> Here is the page for DEC BASIC:
> http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-basic-plus-2083.html
>
> What a nerdish treat but who knew there were so many computer languages? (certainly not me, and I have been in this business since 1975)
>
> https://neilrieck.net
> https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html
>

Check out Rosetta Code.

I like to submit something every once in a while just to
keep my hand in it.

bill

On Saturday, October 28, 2023 at 10:12:41 AM UTC-7, Scott Snadow wrote:
> On Saturday, October 28, 2023 at 9:14:48 AM UTC-5, Neil Rieck wrote:
>
> > I was attending a course the other day when the instructor recommended visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
> I'm in there. From 26 years ago: https://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-kermit-344.html
>
> Scott

Writing a program like that in a comm program scripting language is hilarious. I remember a lot of terminal programs for PC and Amiga had their own proprietary scripting languages, but Kermit's has to be the most portable and I hadn't thought about it even having one until just now. Skimming through the docs reminded me of how thoroughly DEC-inspired Kermit is.

DEC BASIC is unfortunately a bit divergent from the Microsoft BASIC that it inspired, so it's interesting to see an example in the wild that uses "\" instead of ":" as the command separator. Also, many Microsoft BASIC programs didn't bother to use "%" for integer variables because they were typically slower than floating-point, at least for the 6502 BASICs that had to convert ints into floating point and then back to integer to do math and logic operations (because there wasn't room in the ROM for a separate set of integer math routines).

One incompatibility between DEC BASIC and everyone else is that RIGHT$(str$, x) doesn't do what you'd expect. DEC BASIC returns a substring with the rightmost characters of the original string starting from position x, while Microsoft and I believe everyone else who followed their lead return the rightmost x number of characters, which is much more likely to be what you want to do. DEC BASIC is more like how C would work with a null-terminated string, but most of the time people want the last x chars.

One of the nice aspects of Python, Perl, etc. is they make it relatively easy to get substrings and subsets of arrays starting from either end without much hassle. With BASIC, if RIGHT$() doesn't do what you want, then you need to get the string length and subtract. I discovered this while looking at David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games, which claims to be compatible with DEC BASIC, but is really for Microsoft BASIC and its cousins.

There's a GitHub repo with all of the BASIC Computer Games along with contributed ports to a variety of memory-safe scripting languages. Highly recommended. I started to try my hand at rewriting a few in REXX as well as DEC BASIC. https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games

FWIW, BBC BASIC is quite a bit more powerful than Microsoft BASIC in a lot of ways, and it's a real shame that Acorn never managed to sell outside their home market of the UK, since I would've really appreciated having a BASIC with proper math support and a built-in macro assembler. The Archimedes was a really cool system as well. BBC BASIC code does use integer variables where appropriate. RISC OS on a Raspberry Pi is quite an interesting experience. I've been writing some code for that OS recently.

Regards,
Jake Hamby

On 10/28/2023 1:51 PM, bill wrote:
> On 10/28/2023 10:14 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
>> Hopefully this note will be visible through all the astrological spam.
>>
>> I was attending a course the other day when the instructor recommended
>> visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
>>
>> Here is the page for DEC BASIC:
>> http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-basic-plus-2083.html
>>
>> What a nerdish treat but who knew there were so many computer
>> languages? (certainly not me, and I have been in this business since
>> 1975)
>>
>> https://neilrieck.net
>> https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html
>>
>
> Check out Rosetta Code.
>
> I like to submit something every once in a while just to
> keep my hand in it.
>

I just took a quick glance. While Bliss is in the list of languages
there is not a single example. Surely there are people here who could
throw something together to perform some of the tasks in Bliss.

How about 99 bottle? :-)

bill

On Saturday, October 28, 2023 at 10:34:32 PM UTC+1, bill wrote:
> On 10/28/2023 1:51 PM, bill wrote:
> > On 10/28/2023 10:14 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
> >> Hopefully this note will be visible through all the astrological spam.
> >>
> >> I was attending a course the other day when the instructor recommended
> >> visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
> >>
> >> Here is the page for DEC BASIC:
> >> http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-basic-plus-2083.html
> >>
> >> What a nerdish treat but who knew there were so many computer
> >> languages? (certainly not me, and I have been in this business since
> >> 1975)
> >>
> >> https://neilrieck.net
> >> https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html
> >>
> >
> > Check out Rosetta Code.
> >
> > I like to submit something every once in a while just to
> > keep my hand in it.
> >
> I just took a quick glance. While Bliss is in the list of languages
> there is not a single example. Surely there are people here who could
> throw something together to perform some of the tasks in Bliss.
>
> How about 99 bottle? :-)
>
> bill
See http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-bliss-93.html the code is there (whether it works or not I don't know).

On Sat, 28 Oct 2023 13:51:30 -0400, bill wrote:

> On 10/28/2023 10:14 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
>> Hopefully this note will be visible through all the astrological spam.
>>
>> I was attending a course the other day when the instructor recommended
>> visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
>>
>> Here is the page for DEC BASIC:
>> http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-basic-plus-2083.html
>>
>> What a nerdish treat but who knew there were so many computer
>> languages? (certainly not me, and I have been in this business since
>> 1975)
>>
>> https://neilrieck.net https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html
>>
>>
> Check out Rosetta Code.
>
> I like to submit something every once in a while just to keep my hand in
> it.

Yes, I did most (if not all) of the entries for one language.

On Saturday, October 28, 2023 at 1:56:55 PM UTC-4, Jake Hamby (Solid State Jake) wrote:
> On Saturday, October 28, 2023 at 10:12:41 AM UTC-7, Scott Snadow wrote:
> > On Saturday, October 28, 2023 at 9:14:48 AM UTC-5, Neil Rieck wrote:
> >
> > > I was attending a course the other day when the instructor recommended visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
> > I'm in there. From 26 years ago: https://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-kermit-344.html
> >
> > Scott
> Writing a program like that in a comm program scripting language is hilarious. I remember a lot of terminal programs for PC and Amiga had their own proprietary scripting languages, but Kermit's has to be the most portable and I hadn't thought about it even having one until just now. Skimming through the docs reminded me of how thoroughly DEC-inspired Kermit is.
>
> DEC BASIC is unfortunately a bit divergent from the Microsoft BASIC that it inspired, so it's interesting to see an example in the wild that uses "\" instead of ":" as the command separator. Also, many Microsoft BASIC programs didn't bother to use "%" for integer variables because they were typically slower than floating-point, at least for the 6502 BASICs that had to convert ints into floating point and then back to integer to do math and logic operations (because there wasn't room in the ROM for a separate set of integer math routines).
>
> One incompatibility between DEC BASIC and everyone else is that RIGHT$(str$, x) doesn't do what you'd expect. DEC BASIC returns a substring with the rightmost characters of the original string starting from position x, while Microsoft and I believe everyone else who followed their lead return the rightmost x number of characters, which is much more likely to be what you want to do. DEC BASIC is more like how C would work with a null-terminated string, but most of the time people want the last x chars.
>
> One of the nice aspects of Python, Perl, etc. is they make it relatively easy to get substrings and subsets of arrays starting from either end without much hassle. With BASIC, if RIGHT$() doesn't do what you want, then you need to get the string length and subtract. I discovered this while looking at David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games, which claims to be compatible with DEC BASIC, but is really for Microsoft BASIC and its cousins.
>
> There's a GitHub repo with all of the BASIC Computer Games along with contributed ports to a variety of memory-safe scripting languages. Highly recommended. I started to try my hand at rewriting a few in REXX as well as DEC BASIC. https://github.com/coding-horror/basic-computer-games
>
> FWIW, BBC BASIC is quite a bit more powerful than Microsoft BASIC in a lot of ways, and it's a real shame that Acorn never managed to sell outside their home market of the UK, since I would've really appreciated having a BASIC with proper math support and a built-in macro assembler. The Archimedes was a really cool system as well. BBC BASIC code does use integer variables where appropriate. RISC OS on a Raspberry Pi is quite an interesting experience. I've been writing some code for that OS recently.
>
> Regards,
> Jake Hamby

Thanks for that link. Exploring further brought me here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games
which mentions some neat things like a basic-to-javascript compiler
(some people are so damned creative - hats off)

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
https://neilrieck.net
https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html

On 2023-10-28 23:34, bill wrote:
> On 10/28/2023 1:51 PM, bill wrote:
>> On 10/28/2023 10:14 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
>>> Hopefully this note will be visible through all the astrological spam.
>>>
>>> I was attending a course the other day when the instructor
>>> recommended visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
>>>
>>> Here is the page for DEC BASIC:
>>> http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-basic-plus-2083.html
>>>
>>> What a nerdish treat but who knew there were so many computer
>>> languages? (certainly not me, and I have been in this business since
>>> 1975)
>>>
>>> https://neilrieck.net
>>> https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html
>>>
>>
>> Check out Rosetta Code.
>>
>> I like to submit something every once in a while just to
>> keep my hand in it.
>>
>
> I just took a quick glance.  While Bliss is in the list of languages
> there is not a single example.  Surely there are people here who could
> throw something together to perform some of the tasks in Bliss.
>
> How about 99 bottle?  :-)

Huh? How do you read that page? I found the BLISS code without problem.

Johnny

On 10/29/2023 6:16 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2023-10-28 23:34, bill wrote:
>> On 10/28/2023 1:51 PM, bill wrote:
>>> On 10/28/2023 10:14 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
>>>> Hopefully this note will be visible through all the astrological spam.
>>>>
>>>> I was attending a course the other day when the instructor
>>>> recommended visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
>>>>
>>>> Here is the page for DEC BASIC:
>>>> http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-basic-plus-2083.html
>>>>
>>>> What a nerdish treat but who knew there were so many computer
>>>> languages? (certainly not me, and I have been in this business since
>>>> 1975)
>>>>
>>>> https://neilrieck.net
>>>> https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html
>>>>
>>>
>>> Check out Rosetta Code.
>>>
>>> I like to submit something every once in a while just to
>>> keep my hand in it.
>>>
>>
>> I just took a quick glance.  While Bliss is in the list of languages
>> there is not a single example.  Surely there are people here who could
>> throw something together to perform some of the tasks in Bliss.
>>
>> How about 99 bottle?  :-)
>
> Huh? How do you read that page? I found the BLISS code without problem.
>

I was talking about Rosetta Code which also has versions of 99 bottles.
But a lot more cool stuff. But no Bliss.

bill

On Sunday, October 29, 2023 at 6:56:26 PM UTC-4, bill wrote:
> On 10/29/2023 6:16 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On 2023-10-28 23:34, bill wrote:
> >> On 10/28/2023 1:51 PM, bill wrote:
> >>> On 10/28/2023 10:14 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
> >>>> Hopefully this note will be visible through all the astrological spam.
> >>>>
> >>>> I was attending a course the other day when the instructor
> >>>> recommended visiting this site: http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/
> >>>>
> >>>> Here is the page for DEC BASIC:
> >>>> http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-basic-plus-2083.html
> >>>>
> >>>> What a nerdish treat but who knew there were so many computer
> >>>> languages? (certainly not me, and I have been in this business since
> >>>> 1975)
> >>>>
> >>>> https://neilrieck.net
> >>>> https://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Check out Rosetta Code.
> >>>
> >>> I like to submit something every once in a while just to
> >>> keep my hand in it.
> >>>
> >>
> >> I just took a quick glance. While Bliss is in the list of languages
> >> there is not a single example. Surely there are people here who could
> >> throw something together to perform some of the tasks in Bliss.
> >>
> >> How about 99 bottle? :-)
> >
> > Huh? How do you read that page? I found the BLISS code without problem.
> >
> I was talking about Rosetta Code which also has versions of 99 bottles.
> But a lot more cool stuff. But no Bliss.
>
> bill
Personally, I think Ron B was too cute when he wrote that BLISS example all those years
ago to do the processing totally a compile-time using the preprocessor.