Of course, if you were at all interested in computers, you wouldn't bother programming on a dinky Atari 2600. Isn't that what BASIC – even this horribly crippled, elephant man Atari 2600 version of BASIC – is all about? Discovering fundamental programming concepts? The package I got from eBay included a few hand-written programming notes that I assume are from the 1980s. But I have to confess, after writing my first "program", I got that same visceral little thrill of bending the machine to my will that I've always gotten. I could barely stop laughing while punching away at my virtual keypads. It may look painful, but you have no idea until you've tried to work with this funky "IDE". That's probably because I'm the only person crazy enough to actually try programming in this thing. You'll notice that all the other screenshots of Atari 2600 Basic Programming on the web are essentially blank. I booted up a copy of the Basic Programming ROM in the Stella Atari 2600 emulator, then followed along with the manual and wrote a little BASIC program. There is a transcribed HTML version of the manual, but it's much less fun to read without the pictures and diagrams. Surprisingly, the manual isn't available anywhere online, so I scanned it in myself. (Also, if you were wondering what kinds of things I do with my ad revenue, buying crap like this is a big part of it, sadly.) The overlays come with the cartridge, and the controllers mate together to make a primitive sort of keyboard.
I also bought a set of the Atari 2600 keypad controllers. I had to see this for myself, so I bought a copy on eBay. I mentioned in an earlier post the curious collision of early console gaming and programming that was the Atari 2600 BASIC Programming cartridge. Like many programmers of a certain age, I grew up with BASIC. To quote Pogo, we have met the enemy, and he is us.ĭismissing BASIC does seem rather elitist.
Although computer languages continue to evolve, the largest hurdle I see isn't any particular choice of language, but the fact that programmers can write FORTRAN in any language. I'm sure he was exaggerating here for effect as much as I admire his 1972 "The Humble Programmer" paper, it's hard to square that humility with the idea that choosing the wrong programming language will damage the programmer's mind.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. Everything I Needed to Know About Programming I Learned from BASICĮdsger Dijkstra had this to say about Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code:
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