On Sep 29, 2022, at 4:52 PM, Tommy Phillips <[email protected]> wrote: > A BASIC operating environment doesn't really meet the definition of > "operating system".
I just recently re-read John G. Kemeny’s “Man and the Computer”. He specifically describes BASIC as an attempt to create “a new language… that facilitated communication between man and machine.” While it was written for time-sharing computers rather than as the sole operating system, this philosophy made it a natural choice for a very simple operating system for these earlier computers. It was interactive and was “a direct communication between computer and human being” that translated well into a simple command-line operating system. Kemeny envisioned BASIC programming as “teaching the computer” and “imparting intelligence to computers”. The “collaboration” that Kemeny envisioned BASIC facilitating between man and machine is somewhat forgotten today, when even BASIC tends to involve multiple steps and is used as an application separate from the machine. But that philosophy baked into the language, made it, in my opinion, almost inevitable (when combined with BASIC’s very low memory and CPU overhead) that it would be used for the operating system as well. https://archive.org/details/mancomputer00keme/ Jerry Stratton https://hoboes.com/coco/ “We invented machinery to save and surpass our bodies’ labour; now we have invented computers to save and surpass the labour of our minds.”—Peter Laurie, The Joy of Computers
