[Info-vax] Back to BASICs

[Henry Crun]

On 05/10/2021 10:41, gah4 wrote:
> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 5:35:53 PM UTC-7, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
> 
> (snip)
>> There was one BASIC dialect that, looking back, seemed quite interesting
>> (not that I knew about it at the time): it was called “GRASS”, or there was
>> a version specifically for a Z80-based machine, called “ZGRASS”.
>>
>> It had no line numbers, function/subroutine bodies were held in string
>> variables, and it also had foreground and background threading.
>> All pretty sophisticated for, what was it, 1978?
> 
> There is also BASIC09 from about 1980 that also doesn't have line
> numbers, or at least not on most lines. It has the usual structured
> programming system that doesn't need them, but I believe it still
> has GOTO if you want it.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC09
> 
> That is for OS/9, originally on the 6809, and later 68000.
> 
> 
DEC BASIC required a minimum of (IIRC) one line number.
A common story was of a programer who wrote:
1 ! Todays date
32767 end

and then reported to his manager "The program is ready, except for some routines in the middle."

-- 
Mike R.
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