The home computer, a way back machine - In regards to the BASIC programming language, I think my strongest formative influence comes from working with old home computers. There was something wonderful about these machines that plugged into the family television set. They were simple when compared to computers now, and you could get your mind around them. You could master the whole computer because all of the details fit in a 5x8" spiral bound manual a couple of hundred pages long.
Personal Mastery - Perhaps similarly, I used to work on my own cars. I loved working on old Volkswagen Beetles, and I owned a bunch of them. I knew pretty much everything about the Beetle, and I loved knowing all about it. Its about that feeling you get when you master something. Nowadays I take my cars to the experts because I simply cannot understand the new cars. If it breaks down, I call a tow truck. Its harder to love cars today. This is how computers have become.
Interactivity - Lets see. Just like you can take the parts of an old car and flip them over in your hands, see how they fit together and what makes them tick, programming in BASIC on a home computer was like that. You could stop your program, look at variables (flip them over in your hands, so to speak), execute a little line of code on the fly, and resume execution at any point. If you wanted to mess with the video mode, or tweak the sound, or read/write some memory value, you could. The very nature of the machine permitted it. There is was, all laid out before you like clay in your hands and it was not so vast that you were overwhelmed by it all.
BASIC today - So I really feel that if at all possible BASIC programming should still be like this, but it mostly is not. Most BASIC languages today are compilers. This means that once you start to run your program, you cannot just stop it and tweak it. You cant change the code of a running program without needing to restart the program from scratch. In addition, the huge functionality of modern operating systems inspires programming language implementors to continually make their BASIC languages bigger and bigger. This is an artificial barrier to personal mastery.
The reverse 80/20 rule - Okay, since only 20 percent of the Windows operating system functionality is needed 80 percent of the time, why create a programming language that tries to embrace all of it? Home computers did most of what a computer is useful for, and compared to computers today they didnt do much of anything. The reality is that an awful lot of useful things can be done with a very small language.
Small is beautiful - Balance is also beautiful. BASIC should try to strike a balance between being small, and also supporting the most often needed features of Windows, the Mac OS or whatever operating system it runs on.
Aesthetics matter - How does your BASIC language look, like BASIC? Im not kidding. Many programming languages today that call themselves BASIC dont look anything like BASIC. Tacking ideas and syntax onto BASIC from other languages only complicates things. If it doesnt look like BASIC, it isnt BASIC. I dont mean this in a snobby way. I just think that the feel of the original language is worth preserving because it had a nice simple down to earth quality. Removing that quality also removes some of the fun, and I dont see why we need to do that. ;-)
Sunday, April 6, 2014
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