Atari BASIC

[inkyatari]

In 1991, when I left college, I surreptitiously used the Apple II terminals of my previous community college to write a version of Tetris in Applesoft BASIC.  The Apple II was supposedly built around Breakout as a demonstration program, so I figured someone should write the even simpler Tetris for it in lo-res graphics.  It worked, and soon I got my own Macintosh, but got too distracted by its features to continue practicing programming.  Fast forward to a couple of years ago and I was planning to go to a coding academy.   To ramp myself up for programming again, I decided to initiate my own project.  I wanted to make a Columns program in Game Maker.  It wouldn't be the environment I would use in the school, but fundamental concepts would be the same.  I couldn't get it to work, which was frustrating.  I thought, "Things were so much easier when I was programming Tetris in BASIC."  I checked, and I found an Applesoft BASIC emulator.  I dug out my faded Tetris printout and started typing it in.  It was so hard to read that most of the debugging was finding the typos I made, but it worked.  Then I tackled Columns.  It had the same problems it had in Game Maker, in moving down multiple cleared cells.  I studied the Tetris program I made more than 25 years before, and focused down on the way that program cleared lines.  I got Columns to work, using my own logic, but I have no idea how I came up with it then and I can't explain it now.  I then made the change in the Game Maker version, and it still doesn't work.

Later in the school, I took Java Script, and made a version of Columns for that.  That version doesn't work either, and when I get around to it, I hope to debug it and start working on collaborative projects with others.  I'm also trying to polish my Columns program and submit it and Tetris to the emulator author to see if he will post them.  He used to have a "Fork me in GitHub" banner on the homepage, but it has disappeared, so I don't know if he is taking new submissions.

I've written a few games in Game Maker. It's a great introduction to the Delphi programming language, on which it's scripting language is based.

[Rothman]

Learned Applesoft BASIC on a IIe.  Learned BASIC in High School as a freshman in 1989.

[SectorZ]

FORTRAN and its simpler cousin BASIC were learned by me in 1971-72 at our high school.

Our high schools here wouldn't even teach it yet in 1992!

I actually took BASIC in my HS freshman year 1992/1993. It was gone the next year, never to return.

[index]

If you've ever been in computer programming, you're surely familiar with Atari BASIC.

Umm, no. Due to being born in 1992, I've only studied programming in this millennium.

You missed out on all the fun of telling an old green-screen computer to repeat something infinitely many times. 

No way I could have done it when it was cool 

[hotdogPi]

If you've ever been in computer programming, you're surely familiar with Atari BASIC.

Umm, no. Due to being born in 1992, I've only studied programming in this millennium.

You missed out on all the fun of telling an old green-screen computer to repeat something infinitely many times. 

No way I could have done it when it was cool 

Photos not showing.

[OracleUsr]

I had an Apple II+ with a RAM expansion which exposed the Assembler and the standard BASIC.

After that I got a second hand PC AT with a monochrome monitor and I've been with either Intel or a clone since.

[index]

If you've ever been in computer programming, you're surely familiar with Atari BASIC.

Umm, no. Due to being born in 1992, I've only studied programming in this millennium.

You missed out on all the fun of telling an old green-screen computer to repeat something infinitely many times. 

No way I could have done it when it was cool 

Photos not showing.

Odd, they're showing for me. I hope they're showing now.