Re: Computing Editorial (please read)

[et472@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black)]

"Dave Althoff, Jr." (dalloff@gcfn.org) writes:
> In comp.sys.apple2 Charles Richmond <richmond@ev1.net> wrote:
> 
> : Bill Gates did *not* make his money by "his love and adequate knowledge
> : of computing". Bill Gates made his money by stealing other people's 
> : ideas and marketing them. If Gates is anything, he is a marketing 
> : person. *I* can blame Mr. Gates for being a billionaire, because he
> : made that money over the bodies of the others that he drove out of
> : the computer software business with his unfair business practices.
> : IMHO the computer world would be much better off *without* the
> : contributions of one Bill Gates.
> 
> The computer world would be better off without the contributions of Bill 
> Gates and Microsoft except one:  I think Microsoft BASIC, and Applesoft 
> BASIC in particular, are incredibly valuable to the development of the 
> modern computer, because it was the hobbyists with their BASIC 
> programming skills who came up with the "killer apps" that were later 
> redone and turned into the packages that everybody uses today.  Opening 
> up programming to "the masses" was, I think, critical to computer acceptance.
> 
> Of course now the last thing Microsoft wants you to be able to do is to 
> program the computer yourself.....
> 
I think having BASIC in small computers was a good thing, and certainly
Microsoft was behind most commercial implementations.  It was useful
to have something you could easily run a program under, and it was useful
for people who weren't all that into the computers, so they could do something
when they took their computer out of the box.

But I don't think BASIC really has anything to do with learning about
programming.  It is an easy language to get going in, but it never struck
me as an environment to learn how to program in general.  In other words,
you could learn how to do things pretty fast, but I'm not sure you really
learned enough in general to move onto other languages.

I first programmed in 6502 machine language, hand assemblying on a KIM-1.
I learned a lot more from that, and things that I could use when I moved
to a 6809, and even a bit of 68000, than I ever did from BASIC.  Maybe
I'm biased because I didn't start with BASIC, but the only thing I learned
from BASIC was BASIC.

I think the people doing the "killer apps" in those early days were
people who were on a different level.  Perhaps they had first learned
with BASIC, since it had been designed as a beginner's language, and
people had experience in the classroom before there were home computers.
Maybe the formal experience helped.  But these people were also the
ones behind the concept of "Tiny BASIC", which launched Dr. Dobbs
Journal.  To implement a BASIC interpreter in a small space was
probably more important in advancing programming skill than having
BASIC on the computers for such people.  These were the people who
brought chess to the small computers early on, and brought things
like VisiCalc later.

   Michael