Just for the record, I have really enjoyed the discussion that my
off-hand remark sparked!
On 10/6/2022 10:57 AM, Mike Stein wrote:
As I said elsewhere that point of view certainly applies to systems
like Commodore where everything including loading other programs is
done through BASIC, the system prompt is actually a BASIC command prompt
IMO the Model T is uniquely different in fundamental ways; the 'system
prompt' is the MENU and you can certainly load and run TELCOM, TEXT,
etc. and most machine language programs without ever invoking BASIC at
all.
m
On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 12:46 PM Jerry Stratton <[email protected]>
wrote:
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
--
Tommy Phillips
[email protected]
303-981-4310
