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Related Products Society for Amateur Scientists |
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Running
Programs in BASIC Back in the early 1980s, most computer and science hobbyists wrote computer programs in a language called BASIC. The name is an acronymn for Beginner's Algorithmic Symbolic Instruction Code. Most of the early personal computers such as the TRS 80, the Apple II+ and early IBM desktop models had a version of BASIC available. Although designed for teaching the rudiments of programming, many people used BASIC to write remarkably sophisticated programs and applications. The features that made BASIC a good system for teaching programming also made it useful for amateurs and hobbyists. The commands were relatively simple. The code was easy to maintain and porting programs from one platform to another was fairly painless. Even today BASIC refuses to die out; some enthusiasts use it for simple programming tasks that do not require the power and sophistication of C, C++, Java and other languages. However, unless you have an older machine (probably too old to run this product) your computer isn't likely to have BASIC installed. If you want to run some of the programs listed in "The Amateur Scientist" columns from the early 80s, you'll need to find a BASIC interpreter. BASIC
Under Windows Another option is to use 1stBasic, a shareware BASIC interpreter published by PowerBASIC, Inc. A zip filed of this interpreter and supporting files is featured in the Science Software Library. BASIC
Under Macintosh Chipmunk Basic good freeware version of a BASIC interpreter was written by Ron Nicholson, and is also available in the Science Software Library. This interpreter will run on both 68000- and PPC-based Macintoshes. WARNING! |