[OT] BASIC Factoid (was Re: [Tutor] Functions !)

[Remco Gerlich]

On  0, alan.gauld@bt.com wrote:
> > > They are similar.  I never did enough BASIC programming to 
> > 
> > There's actually a reason for that. All versions of BASIC on 
> > early PCs were written by, licensed from, and "maintained" 
> > by Microsoft. And you thought BASIC was public domain :P
> 
> Gosh, I can't believe I'm aplogising for either MS or BASIC!
> 
> However in the pre IBM PC days BASICs were split about 50/50 
> between MS BASIC - A triuly dire but very small ROM version(4K?)
> and various proprietary ones. Commodore used Comodore BASIC 
> which was all their own.

I'm not sure. The Commodore 128's startup screen looks like this:

COMMODORE BASIC V7.0 122365 BYTES FREE
  (C)1985 COMMODORE ELECTRONICS, LTD.
        (C)1977 MICROSOFT CORP.
	  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

> Similarly the Sinclaiir(aka Timex) 
> ZX81 had its own version.  THE Texas Instruments PC of the 
> time (TI/99?) had a very sophisticated BASIC(16K/32K?)
> Most of the Japanese home computers of the '80s used 
> the oldest MS version (mandatory line numbers and only 
> single character variable namess etc!).

Many of them were MSX computers, which was neat because games were
compatible between different brands (if I recall correctly). MSX BASIC was
Microsoft's.

Sinclair's may have been their own.

Of course, I was a kid back then, so I can't really remember, have to use
web searches :)

BASIC was meant as an easy language for beginners, like Python is now. I
can't really imagine why they believe it would be good for beginners.
(see! referred to python!)

-- 
Remco Gerlich