I started programming in GW-BASIC on an IBM PC clone running MS-DOS. Back then, many so-called home and business computers came bundled with a BASIC interpreter, mostly made by or licensed from Microsoft. They all looked similar. You were greeted by a screen with a READY or OK prompt and a blinking cursor waiting for your input. The “screen editor” and interpreter were all in one in the true sense of the word – they weren’t bolted together like the separate text editors and interpreters/compilers we use these days…
If not for the BASIC examples in the old 3-2-1 contact kids magazines that I discovered worked on my elementary schools Apple II computers and then later QBASIC, I have no idea what I would be doing in life.
That was my gateway to a greater interest in computers and an eventual job in IT. And. I will always respect BASIC for it.
This is my childhood! That and Logo Writer were the gateway to my future.
I worked with a buddy; one of us would read from the code listing in the magazine and the other would type. We didn’t know the names of some of the symbols so we made up our own names. Tilde will always be the ‘squiggly’ to me.