![]() Installing the tools was simple enough.īy referencing instructions in their installation guide, I wrote a small vagrant script which provisions a VM, installs the needed dependencies as well as downloads and Installs the compiler nfigure(2) do |config|Ĭonfig.vm.provision "shell", inline: Hello World I ended up going forward with FreeBasic not for any reason in particular other than it just seemed like the best one to go with. Free Basic - I ended up going with this.With a bit of Googling, my options came down to mostly , Some of the books even had to provide short basic conversion charts to help readers write BASIC code compliant with their platform.Īlthough there are a lot of perfectly good emulators and interpreters online, such as jsbeeb a javascript bbmicro emulator and Applesoft BASIC in Javascript, I wanted something offline. This was not as straight forward as one would assume because there are many flavors/dialects of Basic. The first step was getting a basic interpreter or compiler. The programs will not run on modern computers.Īnd give BASIC a try by reading and entering some of the examples given in the books. These books were written for 1980s computers such as the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro. This motivated me to completely ignore the disclaimer on Usborne's website. Since quite a number of readers were so fond of these books, I wanted to get a sense of what they experienced exploring the material. It's a high level general purpose language that aimed to lower the barrier to entry to other languages at the time like FORTRAN. The books were aimed at teaching kids to program in the Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) programming language. While it may not a have been a complete collection, it's still pretty cool to be able to experience such an elegant piece of computer science history. The executable (Basic.exe) found on Github was compiled using the latest version of the MingW32 Gnu compiler.A little while ago, Usborne released some of their classic 80s programming books for free. Gillespie Basic is easy to re-compile - just one header file and one C99 compatible source file produces the small (~120KB) 32-bit Windows executable. You should browse the Gillespie Basic text file for a complete list of functions, commands, and capabilities of this BASIC interpreter. You will also find a helpul collection of sample files that were used during testing which demonstrates some of the built-in functionality. Gillespie Basic contains many functions not found in the vintage versions of BASIC, making it easier to turn ideas into working programs. ![]() Your programs can use up to 2 GB of memory, although it seems unlikely that you'll ever do so. Gillespie Basic supports -dynamic- double precision and string arrays. Having said all that, I think the average user, with little or no programming experience, will find Gillespie Basic fun and useful. ![]() Gillespie Basic makes many calls to the Win32 API, so porting this source code to other platforms will require some effort. Other compilers should certainly work with little or no fuss. I use Mingw32, Pelles-C, and Lcc-Win32 compilers toĬheck simple C99 compatibility. My development PC is running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit but I'm compiling for 32-bit. I'm also trying to make the "C" source code easier to understand. Whereas Gillespie Basic retains 99% of the original Chipmunk functionality, and fewer bugs, I've spent many hours adding more functionality to it, including a BASIC file I/O system and many new built-in functions and commands. Improving Gillespie Basic is a part-time hobby for me and one that I think others will enjoy fiddling with. I decided to name my project "Gillespie Basic" to pay respect to the original programmer and to more easily distinguish this Windows project from the others. Over the years, several people have repurposed the Chipmunk Basic 1.0 source code, porting and modifying it in unique ways for various platforms including Apple, Atari, Linux, and others. That is to say, the original Chipmunk Basic 1.0 was programmed in Pascal and converted to "C" for an old HP Unix system known colloquially as Chipmunk - hence the name. The main story behind the original Chipmunk Basic is that it was written by Dave Gillespie who also later used it to test his P2C (Pascal to C) translator. Gillespie Basic for Windows is a new (2018) spinoff from the original 1990's Chipmunk Basic 1.0 by Dave Gillespie.
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