Negative Space: BASIC
- Baseball in the rain
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In 1980, after I bought a personal computer, I wrote a simple computer program in BASIC and sold it to one of the many magazines at the time. To the second-major newspaper of the area, this was a big deal.
- BASIC auto-numbering and labels
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Write BASIC programs without line numbers, and add them later.
- BASIC tokenization examined
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Why do old BASIC programs have strange characters in their .BAS files? Why do they look like they’re compiled code?
- BASIC video decoder ring
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A very simple decipher utility for very simple transposition ciphers.
- Convert PCBASIC code to TRS-80 Extended Color BASIC
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If you have a book of code written in PCBASIC, it usually isn’t hard to convert it to other Microsoft BASICs, such as on the TRS-80 Color Computers.
- Draw a circle on an iPad map from three points in Pythonista
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Use Pythonista on the iPad to import a map screenshot, tap three points, and draw a circle from those three points. This simple shell can be used for other on-the-fly programming, too.
- HotPaw Basic on iOS
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Looks like there’s a minor renaissance in programming languages on the iPhone and iPad. HotPaw BASIC is one of the first.
- Learning to program without BASIC
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If BASIC is dead, how can our children—or anyone else—learn to program? Today people interested in programming have far more options available to get started hacking their computers.
- Our Cybernetic Future 1972: Man and Machine
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In 1972, John G. Kemeny envisioned a future where man and computer engaged in a two-way dialogue. It was a future where individual citizens and consumers were neither slaves nor resources to be mined.
- Rainbow Magazine BASIC program preflight tool
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This script takes 32-character lines typed in from Rainbow Magazine BASIC listings and assembles them together into full BASIC lines, doing some rudimentary error-checking along the way.
- Rainbow Magazine preflight tool enhanced
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I’ve added several features to the Rainbow Magazine preflight tool, including a check for references to line numbers that don’t exist.
- Read BASIC out loud
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Reading BASIC out loud is a great tool for verifying that what you’ve typed in from an old-school magazine or book is correct.
- Simple game menu for the Color Computer 2 with CoCoSDC
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This simple menu provides one screen for cartridges saved in the CoCoSDC’s flash ROM, and any number of screens for your favorite games for your friends to play.
- SuperBASIC for the TRS-80 Color Computer
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Make BASIC Fun Again. Use loops, switches, and subroutines while writing Extended Color BASIC code for the Radio Shack Color Computer.
- TRS-80 Color Computer RCHECK+ in Perl
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I much prefer to use a modern keyboard and modern windows to type in programs. But Rainbow’s RCHECK+ was too useful to give up. This script will run RCHECK+ on a text file in the macOS Terminal or any Linux/Unix command line.
- The way to be a programmer is to program
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How do you become a computer programmer?
- While sorrowful dogs brood: The TRS-80 Model 100 Poet
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Random poetry: a BASIC random primer and a READ/DATA/STRINGS primer, for the TRS-80 Model 100.
More Information
- Getting Started with Extended Color BASIC (ebook)
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This is the combined manuals for Color BASIC and Extended Color BASIC.
- Creating Adventure Games on Your Computer• (paperback)
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“If I had read this back in 1983 or 1984 when it came out, I would have spent all my time writing adventure games. Even now it’s got me thinking about how to use the same techniques in sqlite/Python. Hartnell describes clearly the techniques used to keep track of rooms and exits, and goes through each technique line-by-line. ” (Tim Hartnell)
- PC-BASIC
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“Free, cross-platform emulator for the GW-BASIC family of interpreters… Technology of the 1980s—available here and now.”
- 101 BASIC Computer Games
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“This is not the first collection of computer games and simulations nor will it by any means be the last.”
