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

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> > 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

Oops! I never noticed that last bit... I stand corrected.

> > Most of the Japanese home computers of the '80s used 
> 
> MSX BASIC was Microsoft's.

It's the MSX ranges I merant but couldn't remember the 'catchy'
abbreviation ;-)

> can't really imagine why they believe it would be good for beginners.

Well, its easier than COBOL(*) and FORTRAN were at the time.
Lisp would have almost usable but required big amounts of
machine resources to run.

Alan g.

(*) And COBOL was supposed to be so easy to use business men 
would write their own programs! Shades of CP4E there...