Another computing pioneer gone

The Register put out an article that said BASIC creater hits END.....

yikes.

He was defintiely a pioneer. Studied him back in high school. BASIC started it all for me on mainframe terminals, to the TI-994A, to Radio Shack/Tandy COCO. Great man. May he RIP.
 
JeffKeryk said:
Visual Basic changed the business world. It single handedly killed COBOL.
Click to expand...
At it's peak, I read there where 7 million full time professional Visual Basic programmers, which was a huge number at the time.

My favorite line of VB code ever... seemed like it was in most every VB application I ever looked at.

Code: 
Dim Sum as <type>

Yum!
 
ripcord said:
At it's peak, I read there where 7 million full time professional Visual Basic programmers, which was a huge number at the time.

My favorite line of VB code ever... seemed like it was in most every VB application I ever looked at.

Code: 
Dim Sum as <type>

Yum!
Click to expand...

There was something that got passed around at work that doesn't appear to have made the transition to the internet. The only part that I recall was:

long time; /* know C */
 
ripcord said:
At it's peak, I read there where 7 million full time professional Visual Basic programmers, which was a huge number at the time.

My favorite line of VB code ever... seemed like it was in most every VB application I ever looked at.

Code: 
Dim Sum as <type>

Yum!
Click to expand...
VB literally changed the world. The beauty of VB was the ability to get your ideas down quickly; to not struggle with the code. Then the plethora of 3rd party add on components. The grid tools were amazing, allowing you to deliver an Excel-like SQL Server app that did not take a ton of user training. Not only business, it became the tool of choice for Scientists as well, again for its RAD capabilities.

Let's just say the VB-SQL Solution made me verrrrry comfortable. Of course it evolved, but that was the spark that lit the fuse. Business analysts delivered solutions in a fraction of the time. Seagate Crystal Reports was a drag and drop reporting tool.

Fun times for sure. I was an insider at Microsoft; the tool developers told me they were swarmed with functionality requests. Once the ODBC database tie came in, it was all over.
 
Remember programming BASIC on my old Atari 8bit back when I was a kid. I'm not a big programmer but I learned BASIC to expand my knowledge of computers. Maybe I should fire the old 130XE up and write a little program in memory tonight.
 
Learned BASIC on our Commodore 64 (which I still have, and it still works). Then learned C when I got to college. What, you have to declare variables now? That's silly. Then I had to debug a BASIC program where I misspelled a variable name. Ohhh.... Declaring variables is a good thing.
 
The generation that laid the foundation for tech, and Silicon Valley have either passed, or getting closer to that point.

A different breed of folks, whose motivations were different than the grifters and bros who took over the industry and turned it into Sillycon Valley and rule today.

Those who are familiar with the Mac might not have heard that Bill Atkinson is being treated for cancer. The tech press certainly hasn't noticed. He was integral to the development of the Mac, and its predecessor, the Lisa, and things might be very different today were it not for his work.
 
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