Thomas E. Kurtz, a Creator of BASIC Computer Language, Dies at 96

[Jacson6]

Thomas E. Kurtz, co-creator of BASIC programming language, dies at 96
Kenneth R. Rosen

Paywalled NYTimes article.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/technology/thomas-kurtz-dead.html


Back in the 1980's I used BASIC to program computers and then went to college for Electronic Technology. His BASIC language inspired me to learn more.

[gay texan]

1. .....

10 Print "thanks mate"
20 goto 10
run

[Jacson6]

2. :-) n/t

[dgauss]

7. Fun, but then you might have to apologize to someone somewhere...

[gay texan]

9. Have i ever.... n/t

[dgauss]

10. I saw the code you put up there as a kind of a prank that many old timers could relate to. And then yeah,

maybe you'd have to account for a spool of perforated paper. Pretty harmless.

[canuckledragger]

8. I remember doing that with my own name, on Commodore 64's

That sequence was the very first program I learned to do myself.

Sadly, my programming skills never really got much beyond that, but fiddling with things like that gave me a life-long interest in computers in general, and have been building my own since my 20's

Sad to see the creator passed away. End of an era.

[dgauss]

3. I remember learning BASIC in high school.

Don't remember exactly what the course was, maybe a dedicated programming course, maybe part of something a little broader.

But it was one of those classes I looked forward to. Just the idea that it was possible to put together this string of logic that could actually DO things in the real world was exciting (once you figured out where your initial attempt went wrong and corrected it).

I also really enjoyed the term "spaghetti code" which I think was mostly the result of the GOTO command.

In any case, thanks Thomas E. Kurtz.

[Jacson6]

4. On the C64 I used a lot of gosub commands.

You would return to the main program to avoid creating loops that would make the C64/C128 crash.

[dgauss]

6. I have to say, the goto command kind of made programming into an adventure.

You could pretty much goto anywhere at any time.

[Intractable]

5. My first computer language!

Post #1 is funny, but it results in an infinite loop. These are not allowed.

[Otto_Harper]

12. Actually, infinite loops are OK

As long as you apply them correctly. In my pre-BASIC days, I can recall writing a program that used an infinite loop to do housekeeping until an outside interrupt occurred. The interrupt would cause it to GOTO another piece of code, to service the interruption.

The interrupt was signalled by a variable suddenly changing value within the loop, due to actions from the OS. The problem with that code arose when folks started using the new IBM optimizing compiler. The compiler saw that there was nothing inside the loop that changed the variable, and so moved the test to outside of the loop to improve efficiency. Result was a complete loss of control into an infinite loop. On a mainframe. Which cost real money for processor time.

[SWBTATTReg]

11. My favorite language among many. Basic was always there too, in many flavors and uses, among all of the other

languages we used. And it was so easy to use too.

RIP, Mr. Kurtz.

[duncang]

13. Sitting around

Playing the game with the gorilla tossing bananas, hangman, checking amortization tables, and hating edlin. Didn’t know much but goofed with basic a little. 5.0 and edit what a upgrade.