The Story of BASIC
summary
Microsoft BASIC fits into 3 KB assembly and boots on an Altair through a hand-entered bootstrap via front-panel switches to load a tape; the PDP emulator and manuals replace hardware access during development and the loader works on first try in the origin story. Targets of the rise: Altair, Apple II and Commodore machines (Commodore 64 sold about 12 million Commodore 64 units) despite tiny memory footprints like 256 bytes RAM. Fragmentation of dialects, perceived slowness and replacement by spreadsheets/tools explain the decline.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Introduction to BASIC
- 10:20BASIC's origins at Dartmouth
- 19:56Microsoft BASIC and Altair 8800
- 29:28BASIC on early home computers
- 39:58Apple, Steve Wozniak, and BASIC
- 46:26Why BASIC disappeared
- 50:18Future of programming languages
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