Misc. Ramblings

Thanks to everyone who wrote in about my poor attempt at using a old, old computer language called BASIC to inject a bit of humor and let people know where I was on Friday. Based on the comments, I think I succeeded on one and failed on the other <G> In either case, it was kind of fun trying to remember how to mis-use BASIC but I apologize for the late replies.

In any case, you have to remember that in the mid-1970s, there weren't a whole lot of languages, interpreted or otherwise, available to run (maybe COBOL, assemblers, LISP, and FORTRAN). I think later came FORTH, Pascal/Modula, RPG, etc. but don't write a letters if I have the sequence wrong. The point is you couldn't run down to your local CompUSA or Frys and buy a copy. In fact, since the IBM PC didn't even come out until the early 80s, the usual way to learn a language was to have an account on a timesharing system on a mini or mainframe. During that time, I was in college and had access to a DEC PDP-11/45 in the Math Department and an Apple II (no hard drive) in the Psychology Dept.

I have to admit that I wrote some pretty awful code in AppleBasic but you have to remember, it was pretty advanced for its time. For example, I don't recall too many languages that used color graphics. And if you were careful, you could write structured code. On the other hand, I have to agree that if you've learned BASIC as your first language, you will probably always have problems learning others because they require a completely different mind set. In either case, I used AppleBasic to convert a paper-based psychological test (the Stroop Color-Word Interference Test) into a PC-based version for my senior project. The program was several thousand lines long and was as bug-free as any MS program <G>.

To show just how demented we Psych majors are, the test subjects sat in front of a TV monitor that displayed the test. The subject would respond by pressing the key of the first letter of the appropriate word displayed on the screen. But, at the same time, they were listening, on headphones, to one of four recordings. The first was a passage of a comedy bit by someone I have since forgotten his name. The second version was the same bit, but had the text jumbled up in random order. The third recording was a piece of classical music, and the fourth was silence. Unfortunately, there seemed to be an interference problem between the portable tape recorder I was using and the Apple II so when I ran the actual experiment, the PC locked up several times.

Anyway, I am amazed at how many different languages there are now. But with all its faults, BASIC probably solved more quick and dirty problems than any other language of the day.

Aloha!