CHIP-8 is an interpreted programming language , developed by Joseph Weisbecker on his 1802 microprocessor. It was initially used on the COSMAC VIP and Telmac 1800 , which were 8-bit microcomputers made in the mid-1970s.
102-553: CHIP-8 was designed to be easy to program for, as well as using less memory than other programming languages like BASIC . Interpreters have been made for many devices, such as home computers , microcomputers , graphing calculators , mobile phones , and video game consoles . CHIP-8 has been used on a wide range of devices over time; the first community to use CHIP-8 started in the 1970s on microcomputers . They shared extensions and programs in newsletters such as ARESCO's VIPER for COSMAC VIP users or DREAMER for DREAM 6800 users. In
204-435: A ROM cartridge. BASIC declined in popularity in the 1990s, as more powerful microcomputers came to market and programming languages with advanced features (such as Pascal and C ) became tenable on such computers. By then, most nontechnical personal computer users relied on pre-written applications rather than writing their own programs. In 1991, Microsoft released Visual Basic , combining an updated version of BASIC with
306-409: A byte or word , is referred to, it is usually specified by a number from 0 upwards corresponding to its position within the byte or word. However, 0 can refer to either the most or least significant bit depending on the context. Similar to torque and energy in physics; information-theoretic information and data storage size have the same dimensionality of units of measurement , but there
408-523: A sigil , and values are often identified as strings by being delimited by "double quotation marks". Arrays in BASIC could contain integers, floating point or string variables. Some dialects of BASIC supported matrices and matrix operations , which can be used to solve sets of simultaneous linear algebraic equations. These dialects would directly support matrix operations such as assignment, addition, multiplication (of compatible matrix types), and evaluation of
510-509: A unit of information , the bit is also known as a shannon , named after Claude E. Shannon . The symbol for the binary digit is either "bit", per the IEC 80000-13 :2008 standard, or the lowercase character "b", per the IEEE 1541-2002 standard. Use of the latter may create confusion with the capital "B" which is the international standard symbol for the byte. The encoding of data by discrete bits
612-535: A visual forms builder . This reignited use of the language and "VB" remains a major programming language in the form of VB.NET , while a hobbyist scene for BASIC more broadly continues to exist. John G. Kemeny was the chairman of the Dartmouth College Mathematics Department. Based largely on his reputation as an innovator in math teaching, in 1959 the college won an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award for $ 500,000 to build
714-764: A $ 300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation , which was used to purchase a GE-225 computer for processing, and a Datanet-30 realtime processor to handle the Teletype Model 33 teleprinters used for input and output. A team of a dozen undergraduates worked on the project for about a year, writing both the DTSS system and the BASIC compiler. The first version BASIC language was released on 1 May 1964. Initially, BASIC concentrated on supporting straightforward mathematical work, with matrix arithmetic support from its initial implementation as
816-677: A BASIC for the PDP-8 , which was a major success in the education market. By the early 1970s, FOCAL and JOSS had been forgotten and BASIC had become almost universal in the minicomputer market. DEC would go on to introduce their updated version, BASIC-PLUS , for use on the RSTS/E time-sharing operating system. During this period a number of simple text-based games were written in BASIC, most notably Mike Mayfield's Star Trek . David Ahl collected these, some ported from FOCAL, and published them in an educational newsletter he compiled. He later collected
918-482: A Bell Labs memo on 9 January 1947 in which he contracted "binary information digit" to simply "bit". A bit can be stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in either of two possible distinct states . These may be the two stable states of a flip-flop , two positions of an electrical switch , two distinct voltage or current levels allowed by a circuit , two distinct levels of light intensity , two directions of magnetization or polarization ,
1020-548: A CHIP-8 interpreter called CHIP-48 was made by Andreas Gustafsson for HP-48 graphing calculators . Erik Bryntse later created another interpreter based on CHIP-48, titled "SUPER-CHIP", often shortened to SCHIP or S-CHIP. SCHIP extended the CHIP-8 language with a larger resolution and several additional opcodes meant to make programming easier. David Winter's interpreter, disassembler, and extended technical documentation popularized CHIP-8/SCHIP on other platforms. It laid out
1122-475: A batch language, and character string functionality being added by 1965. Usage in the university rapidly expanded, requiring the main CPU to be replaced by a GE-235, and still later by a GE-635. By the early 1970s there were hundreds of terminals connected to the machines at Dartmouth, some of them remotely. Wanting use of the language to become widespread, its designers made the compiler available free of charge. In
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#17328012184001224-429: A bit was represented by the polarity of magnetization of a certain area of a ferromagnetic film, or by a change in polarity from one direction to the other. The same principle was later used in the magnetic bubble memory developed in the 1980s, and is still found in various magnetic strip items such as metro tickets and some credit cards . In modern semiconductor memory , such as dynamic random-access memory ,
1326-441: A complete list of undocumented opcodes and features and was distributed across hobbyist forums. Many interpreters used these works as a starting point. However, CHIP-48 subtly changed the semantics of a few of the opcodes, and SCHIP continued to use those new semantics in addition to changing other opcodes. Many online resources about CHIP-8 propagate these new semantics, so many modern CHIP-8 games are not backwards compatible with
1428-466: A determinant. Many microcomputer BASICs did not support this data type; matrix operations were still possible, but had to be programmed explicitly on array elements. New BASIC programmers on a home computer might start with a simple program, perhaps using the language's PRINT statement to display a message on the screen; a well-known and often-replicated example is Kernighan and Ritchie 's "Hello, World!" program : An infinite loop could be used to fill
1530-410: A loop: DO 100 , I = 1 , 10 , 2 . Is it '1, 10, 2' or '1, 2, 10', and is the comma after the line number required or not?" Moreover, the lack of any sort of immediate feedback was a key problem; the machines of the era used batch processing and took a long time to complete a run of a program. While Kurtz was visiting MIT , John McCarthy suggested that time-sharing offered a solution;
1632-458: A machine capable of running between 16 and 32 users at the same time. The system, bundled as the HP 2000, was the first mini platform to offer time-sharing and was an immediate runaway success, catapulting HP to become the third-largest vendor in the minicomputer space, behind DEC and Data General (DG). DEC, the leader in the minicomputer space since the mid-1960s, had initially ignored BASIC. This
1734-417: A new department building. Thomas E. Kurtz had joined the department in 1956, and from the 1960s Kemeny and Kurtz agreed on the need for programming literacy among students outside the traditional STEM fields. Kemeny later noted that "Our vision was that every student on campus should have access to a computer , and any faculty member should be able to use a computer in the classroom whenever appropriate. It
1836-433: A number of these into book form, 101 BASIC Computer Games , published in 1973. During the same period, Ahl was involved in the creation of a small computer for education use, an early personal computer . When management refused to support the concept, Ahl left DEC in 1974 to found the seminal computer magazine, Creative Computing . The book remained popular, and was re-published on several occasions. The introduction of
1938-401: A prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration", BASIC was one of the few languages that was both high-level enough to be usable by those without training and small enough to fit into the microcomputers of the day, making it the de facto standard programming language on early microcomputers. The first microcomputer version of BASIC
2040-463: A single machine could divide up its processing time among many users, giving them the illusion of having a (slow) computer to themselves. Small programs would return results in a few seconds. This led to increasing interest in a system using time-sharing and a new language specifically for use by non-STEM students. Kemeny wrote the first version of BASIC. The acronym BASIC comes from the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz. The new language
2142-406: A smaller introductory version with the initial releases of the machines and a Microsoft-based version introduced as interest in the platforms increased. As new companies entered the field, additional versions were added that subtly changed the BASIC family. The Atari 8-bit computers use the 8 KB Atari BASIC which is not derived from Microsoft BASIC. Sinclair BASIC was introduced in 1980 with
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#17328012184002244-445: A sprite is drawn and set to 0 otherwise. This is used for collision detection. As previously described, a beeping sound is played when the value of the sound timer is nonzero. CHIP-8 has 35 opcodes , which are all two bytes long and stored big-endian . The opcodes are listed below, in hexadecimal and with the following symbols: There have been many implementations of the CHIP-8 instruction set since 1978. The following specification
2346-404: A time in serial transmission , and by a multiple number of bits in parallel transmission . A bitwise operation optionally processes bits one at a time. Data transfer rates are usually measured in decimal SI multiples of the unit bit per second (bit/s), such as kbit/s. In the earliest non-electronic information processing devices, such as Jacquard's loom or Babbage's Analytical Engine , a bit
2448-562: A version of the MS code, or quickly introduced new models with it. Ohio Scientific's personal computers also joined this trend at that time. By 1978, MS BASIC was a de facto standard and practically every home computer of the 1980s included it in ROM . Upon boot, a BASIC interpreter in direct mode was presented. Commodore Business Machines includes Commodore BASIC , based on Microsoft BASIC. The Apple II and TRS-80 each have two versions of BASIC:
2550-561: A wide variety of Tiny BASICs with added features or other improvements, with versions from Tom Pittman and Li-Chen Wang becoming particularly well known. Micro-Soft, by this time Microsoft , ported their interpreter for the MOS 6502 , which quickly become one of the most popular microprocessors of the 8-bit era. When new microcomputers began to appear, notably the "1977 trinity" of the TRS-80 , Commodore PET and Apple II , they either included
2652-452: Is 64×32 pixels , and color is monochrome . Graphics are drawn to the screen solely by drawing sprites , which are 8 pixels wide and may be from 1 to 15 pixels in height. Sprite pixels are XOR 'd with corresponding screen pixels. In other words, sprite pixels that are set flip the color of the corresponding screen pixel, while unset sprite pixels do nothing. The carry flag (VF) is set to 1 if any screen pixels are flipped from set to unset when
2754-532: Is based on the SUPER-CHIP specification from 1991 (but without the additional opcodes that provide extended functionality), as that is the most commonly encountered extension set today. Footnotes denote incompatibilities with the original CHIP-8 instruction set from 1978. BASIC BASIC ( Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code ) is a family of general-purpose , high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version
2856-417: Is done with a hex keyboard that has 16 keys ranging 0 to F. The '8', '4', '6', and '2' keys are typically used for directional input. Three opcodes are used to detect input. One skips an instruction if a specific key is pressed, while another does the same if a specific key is not pressed. The third waits for a key press, and then stores it in one of the data registers. Original CHIP-8 Display resolution
2958-486: Is in general no meaning to adding, subtracting or otherwise combining the units mathematically, although one may act as a bound on the other. Units of information used in information theory include the shannon (Sh), the natural unit of information (nat) and the hartley (Hart). One shannon is the maximum amount of information needed to specify the state of one bit of storage. These are related by 1 Sh ≈ 0.693 nat ≈ 0.301 Hart. Some authors also define
3060-554: Is more compressed—the same bucket can hold more. For example, it is estimated that the combined technological capacity of the world to store information provides 1,300 exabytes of hardware digits. However, when this storage space is filled and the corresponding content is optimally compressed, this only represents 295 exabytes of information. When optimally compressed, the resulting carrying capacity approaches Shannon information or information entropy . Certain bitwise computer processor instructions (such as bit set ) operate at
3162-577: Is one of the languages that can be accessed by the 4Dos, 4NT, and Take Command enhanced shells. SaxBasic and WWB are also very similar to the Visual Basic line of Basic implementations. The pre-Office 97 macro language for Microsoft Word is known as WordBASIC . Excel 4 and 5 use Visual Basic itself as a macro language. Chipmunk Basic , an old-school interpreter similar to BASICs of the 1970s, is available for Linux , Microsoft Windows and macOS . The ubiquity of BASIC interpreters on personal computers
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3264-549: Is the carry flag , while in subtraction, it is the "no borrow" flag. In the draw instruction VF is set upon pixel collision. The address register, which is named I, is 12 bits wide and is used with several opcodes that involve memory operations. The stack is only used to store return addresses when subroutines are called. The original RCA 1802 version allocated 48 bytes for up to 12 levels of nesting; modern implementations usually have more. CHIP-8 has two timers. They both count down at 60 hertz , until they reach 0. Input
3366-496: Is very similar to VBA 6. The Host Explorer terminal emulator uses WWB as a macro language; or more recently the programme and the suite in which it is contained is programmable in an in-house Basic variant known as Hummingbird Basic. The VBScript variant is used for programming web content, Outlook 97, Internet Explorer, and the Windows Script Host. WSH also has a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) engine installed as
3468-446: Is where the term CHIP-8 originated. However, the CHIP-8 interpreter itself occupies the first 512 bytes of the memory space on these machines. For this reason, most programs written for the original system begin at memory location 512 (0x200) and do not access any of the memory below the location 512 (0x200). The uppermost 256 bytes (0xF00-0xFFF) are reserved for display refresh, and the 96 bytes below that (0xEA0-0xEFF) were reserved for
3570-578: Is written for GW-BASIC, but will work in most versions of BASIC with minimal changes: The resulting dialog might resemble: Bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication . The name is a portmanteau of binary digit . The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values . These values are most commonly represented as either " 1 " or " 0 " , but other representations such as true / false , yes / no , on / off , or + / − are also widely used. The relation between these values and
3672-511: The Apple Macintosh , while yab is a version of yaBasic optimized for BeOS , ZETA and Haiku . These later variations introduced many extensions, such as improved string manipulation and graphics support, access to the file system and additional data types . More important were the facilities for structured programming , including additional control structures and proper subroutines supporting local variables . However, by
3774-536: The Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo DSi called Petit Computer allows for programming in a slightly modified version of BASIC with DS button support. A version has also been released for Nintendo Switch , which has also been supplied a version of the Fuze Code System, a BASIC variant first implemented as a custom Raspberry Pi machine. Previously BASIC was made available on consoles as Family BASIC (for
3876-536: The Nintendo Famicom ) and PSX Chipmunk Basic (for the original PlayStation ), while yabasic was ported to the PlayStation 2 and FreeBASIC to the original Xbox . Variants of BASIC are available on graphing and otherwise programmable calculators made by Texas Instruments ( TI-BASIC ), HP ( HP BASIC ), Casio ( Casio BASIC ), and others. QBasic , a version of Microsoft QuickBASIC without
3978-569: The PDP-11 and Data General Nova in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hewlett-Packard produced an entire computer line for this method of operation, introducing the HP2000 series in the late 1960s and continuing sales into the 1980s. Many early video games trace their history to one of these versions of BASIC. The emergence of microcomputers in the mid-1970s led to the development of multiple BASIC dialects, including Microsoft BASIC in 1975. Due to
4080-951: The QB64 and FreeBASIC implementations. In 2013 a game written in QBasic and compiled with QB64 for modern computers entitled Black Annex was released on Steam . Blitz Basic , Dark Basic , SdlBasic , Super Game System Basic , PlayBASIC , CoolBasic , AllegroBASIC , ethosBASIC , GLBasic and Basic4GL further filled this demand, right up to the modern RCBasic , NaaLaa , AppGameKit , Monkey 2 and Cerberus-X . In 1991, Microsoft introduced Visual Basic , an evolutionary development of QuickBASIC . It included constructs from that language such as block-structured control statements, parameterized subroutines and optional static typing as well as object-oriented constructs from other languages such as "With" and "For Each". The language retained some compatibility with its predecessors, such as
4182-510: The public domain , using licenses like the Creative commons Zero license. During the 1970s and 1980s, CHIP-8 users shared CHIP-8 programs, but also changes and extensions to the CHIP-8 interpreter, like in the VIPER magazine for COSMAC VIP. These extensions included CHIP-10 and Hi-Res CHIP-8, which introduced a higher resolution than the standard 64x32, and CHIP-8C and CHIP-8X, which extended
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4284-410: The yottabit (Ybit). When the information capacity of a storage system or a communication channel is presented in bits or bits per second , this often refers to binary digits, which is a computer hardware capacity to store binary data ( 0 or 1 , up or down, current or not, etc.). Information capacity of a storage system is only an upper bound to the quantity of information stored therein. If
4386-449: The 1940s, computer builders experimented with a variety of storage methods, such as pressure pulses traveling down a mercury delay line , charges stored on the inside surface of a cathode-ray tube , or opaque spots printed on glass discs by photolithographic techniques. In the 1950s and 1960s, these methods were largely supplanted by magnetic storage devices such as magnetic-core memory , magnetic tapes , drums , and disks , where
4488-491: The 1960s, software became a chargeable commodity; until then, it was provided without charge as a service with expensive computers, usually available only to lease. They also made it available to high schools in the Hanover, New Hampshire , area and regionally throughout New England on Teletype Model 33 and Model 35 teleprinter terminals connected to Dartmouth via dial-up phone lines, and they put considerable effort into promoting
4590-561: The BASIC language with a day of events on April 30, 2014. A short documentary film was produced for the event. Minimal versions of BASIC had only integer variables and one- or two-letter variable names, which minimized requirements of limited and expensive memory (RAM). More powerful versions had floating-point arithmetic, and variables could be labelled with names six or more characters long. There were some problems and restrictions in early implementations; for example, Applesoft BASIC allowed variable names to be several characters long, but only
4692-508: The DO was instead indicated by the NEXT I . Likewise, the cryptic IF statement of Fortran, whose syntax matched a particular instruction of the machine on which it was originally written, became the simpler IF I = 5 THEN GOTO 100 . These changes made the language much less idiosyncratic while still having an overall structure and feel similar to the original FORTRAN. The project received
4794-568: The DREAM 6800, came with its own version of CHIP-8. A newsletter similar to VIPER, called DREAMER, was used to share CHIP-8 games for this interpreter. In 1981, Electronics Today International (ETI) ran a series of articles on building a computer, the ETI-660, which was also very similar to the VIP (and used the same microprocessor). ETI ran regular ETI-660 and general CHIP-8 columns until 1985. In 1990,
4896-497: The Dim keyword for declarations, "Gosub"/Return statements and optional line numbers which could be used to locate errors. An important driver for the development of Visual Basic was as the new macro language for Microsoft Excel , a spreadsheet program. To the surprise of many at Microsoft who still initially marketed it as a language for hobbyists, the language came into widespread use for small custom business applications shortly after
4998-642: The Sinclair ZX80 , and was later extended for the Sinclair ZX81 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum . The BBC published BBC BASIC , developed by Acorn Computers , incorporates extra structured programming keywords and floating-point features. As the popularity of BASIC grew in this period, computer magazines published complete source code in BASIC for video games, utilities, and other programs. Given BASIC's straightforward nature, it
5100-464: The VIPER newsletter, the first three issues detailed the machine code for the CHIP-8 interpreter for the VIP. In the 1990s, CHIP-8 interpreters started to be created for graphing calculators . Notable examples include CHIP-48 and SCHIP for the HP-48 . CHIP-8 applications include original games, demos , as well as recreations of popular games from other systems. With some CHIP-8 applications being in
5202-409: The ambiguity of relying on the underlying hardware design, the unit octet was defined to explicitly denote a sequence of eight bits. Computers usually manipulate bits in groups of a fixed size, conventionally named " words ". Like the byte, the number of bits in a word also varies with the hardware design, and is typically between 8 and 80 bits, or even more in some specialized computers. In
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#17328012184005304-403: The article prompted Microsoft to develop and release Small Basic ; it also inspired similar projects like Basic-256 and the web based Quite Basic. Dartmouth held a 50th anniversary celebration for BASIC on 1 May 2014. The pedagogical use of BASIC has been followed by other languages, such as Pascal , Java and particularly Python . Dartmouth College celebrated the 50th anniversary of
5406-424: The average. This principle is the basis of data compression technology. Using an analogy, the hardware binary digits refer to the amount of storage space available (like the number of buckets available to store things), and the information content the filling, which comes in different levels of granularity (fine or coarse, that is, compressed or uncompressed information). When the granularity is finer—when information
5508-461: The blink of an eye" even using a "slow" language, as long as large amounts of data were not involved. Many small business owners found they could create their own small, yet useful applications in a few evenings to meet their own specialized needs. Eventually, during the lengthy lifetime of VB3, knowledge of Visual Basic had become a marketable job skill. Microsoft also produced VBScript in 1996 and Visual Basic .NET in 2001. The latter has essentially
5610-515: The business-focused CP/M computers which soon became widespread in small business environments, Microsoft BASIC ( MBASIC ) was one of the leading applications. In 1978, David Lien published the first edition of The BASIC Handbook: An Encyclopedia of the BASIC Computer Language , documenting keywords across over 78 different computers. By 1981, the second edition documented keywords from over 250 different computers, showcasing
5712-442: The call stack, internal use, and other variables. In modern CHIP-8 implementations, where the interpreter is running natively outside the 4K memory space, there is no need to avoid the lower 512 bytes of memory (0x000-0x1FF), and it is common to store font data there. CHIP-8 has 16 8- bit data registers named V0 to VF. The VF register doubles as a flag for some instructions; thus, it should be avoided. In an addition operation, VF
5814-489: The display with the message: Note that the END statement is optional and has no action in most dialects of BASIC. It was not always included, as is the case in this example. This same program can be modified to print a fixed number of messages using the common FOR...NEXT statement: Most home computers BASIC versions, such as MSX BASIC and GW-BASIC , supported simple data types, loop cycles, and arrays. The following example
5916-415: The early 21st century, retail personal or server computers have a word size of 32 or 64 bits. The International System of Units defines a series of decimal prefixes for multiples of standardized units which are commonly also used with the bit and the byte. The prefixes kilo (10 ) through yotta (10 ) increment by multiples of one thousand, and the corresponding units are the kilobit (kbit) through
6018-453: The emerging field quickly followed suit; Tymshare introduced SUPER BASIC in 1968, CompuServe had a version on the DEC-10 at their launch in 1969, and by the early 1970s BASIC was largely universal on general-purpose mainframe computers . Even IBM eventually joined the club with the introduction of VS-BASIC in 1973. Although time-sharing services with BASIC were successful for a time,
6120-545: The explosive growth of the microcomputer era. When IBM was designing the IBM PC , they followed the paradigm of existing home computers in having a built-in BASIC interpreter. They sourced this from Microsoft – IBM Cassette BASIC – but Microsoft also produced several other versions of BASIC for MS-DOS / PC DOS including IBM Disk BASIC (BASIC D), IBM BASICA (BASIC A), GW-BASIC (a BASICA-compatible version that did not need IBM's ROM) and QBasic , all typically bundled with
6222-543: The final version 6.0 of the original Visual Basic ended on March 31, 2005, followed by extended support in March 2008. Owing to its persistent remaining popularity, third-party attempts to further support it exist. On February 2, 2017, Microsoft announced that development on VB.NET would no longer be in parallel with that of C#, and on March 11, 2020, it was announced that evolution of the VB.NET language had also concluded. Even so,
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#17328012184006324-406: The first microcomputers in the mid-1970s was the start of explosive growth for BASIC. It had the advantage that it was fairly well known to the young designers and computer hobbyists who took an interest in microcomputers, many of whom had seen BASIC on minis or mainframes. Despite Dijkstra 's famous judgement in 1975, "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had
6426-489: The first two were significant, thus it was possible to inadvertently write a program with variables "LOSS" and "LOAN", which would be treated as being the same; assigning a value to "LOAN" would silently overwrite the value intended as "LOSS". Keywords could not be used in variables in many early BASICs; "SCORE" would be interpreted as "SC" OR "E", where OR was a keyword. String variables are usually distinguished in many microcomputer dialects by having $ suffixed to their name as
6528-880: The language was still supported. Many other BASIC dialects have also sprung up since 1990, including the open source QB64 and FreeBASIC , inspired by QBasic, and the Visual Basic-styled RapidQ , HBasic , Basic For Qt and Gambas . Modern commercial incarnations include PureBasic , PowerBASIC , Xojo , Monkey X and True BASIC (the direct successor to Dartmouth BASIC from a company controlled by Kurtz). Several web-based simple BASIC interpreters also now exist, including Microsoft's Small Basic and Google 's wwwBASIC. A number of compilers also exist that convert BASIC into JavaScript . such as NS Basic . Building from earlier efforts such as Mobile Basic , many dialects are now available for smartphones and tablets. On game consoles, an application for
6630-505: The language. How to design and implement a stripped-down version of an interpreter for the BASIC language was covered in articles by Allison in the first three quarterly issues of the People's Computer Company newsletter published in 1975 and implementations with source code published in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia: Running Light Without Overbyte . This led to
6732-514: The language. In the following years, as other dialects of BASIC appeared, Kemeny and Kurtz's original BASIC dialect became known as Dartmouth BASIC . New Hampshire recognized the accomplishment in 2019 when it erected a highway historical marker in Hanover describing the creation of "the first user-friendly programming language". The emergence of BASIC took place as part of a wider movement toward time-sharing systems. First conceptualized during
6834-568: The late 1950s, the idea became so dominant in the computer industry by the early 1960s that its proponents were speaking of a future in which users would "buy time on the computer much the same way that the average household buys power and water from utility companies". General Electric, having worked on the Dartmouth project, wrote their own underlying operating system and launched an online time-sharing system known as Mark I. It featured BASIC as one of its primary selling points. Other companies in
6936-403: The latter half of the 1980s, users were increasingly using pre-made applications written by others rather than learning programming themselves; while professional programmers now had a wide range of more advanced languages available on small computers. C and later C++ became the languages of choice for professional "shrink wrap" application development. A niche that BASIC continued to fill
7038-409: The level of manipulating bits rather than manipulating data interpreted as an aggregate of bits. In the 1980s, when bitmapped computer displays became popular, some computers provided specialized bit block transfer instructions to set or copy the bits that corresponded to a given rectangular area on the screen. In most computers and programming languages, when a bit within a group of bits, such as
7140-534: The linker to make EXE files, is present in the Windows NT and DOS- Windows 95 streams of operating systems and can be obtained for more recent releases like Windows 7 which do not have them. Prior to DOS 5, the Basic interpreter was GW-Basic . QuickBasic is part of a series of three languages issued by Microsoft for the home and office power user and small-scale professional development; QuickC and QuickPascal are
7242-695: The machine. In addition they produced the Microsoft BASIC Compiler aimed at professional programmers. Turbo Pascal -publisher Borland published Turbo Basic 1.0 in 1985 (successor versions are still being marketed under the name PowerBASIC ). On Unix-like systems, specialized implementations were created such as XBasic and X11-Basic . XBasic was ported to Microsoft Windows as XBLite , and cross-platform variants such as SmallBasic , yabasic , Bywater BASIC , nuBasic , MyBasic , Logic Basic , Liberty BASIC , and wxBasic emerged. FutureBASIC and Chipmunk Basic meanwhile targeted
7344-538: The monochrome display capabilities to support limited color, among other features. These extensions were mostly backwards compatible, as they were based on the original interpreter, although some repurposed rarely used opcodes for new instructions. In 1979, Electronics Australia ran a series of articles on building a kit computer similar to the COSMAC VIP, based on the Motorola 6800 architecture. This computer,
7446-408: The orientation of reversible double stranded DNA , etc. Bits can be implemented in several forms. In most modern computing devices, a bit is usually represented by an electrical voltage or current pulse, or by the electrical state of a flip-flop circuit. For devices using positive logic , a digit value of 1 (or a logical value of true) is represented by a more positive voltage relative to
7548-585: The original 101 BASIC games converted into the Microsoft dialect and published it from Creative Computing as BASIC Computer Games . This book, and its sequels, provided hundreds of ready-to-go programs that could be easily converted to practically any BASIC-running platform. The book reached the stores in 1978, just as the home computer market was starting off, and it became the first million-selling computer book. Later packages, such as Learn to Program BASIC would also have gaming as an introductory focus. On
7650-556: The original CHIP-8 interpreter for the COSMAC VIP, even if they do not specifically use the new SCHIP extensions. Some extensions take opcodes or behavior from multiple extensions, like XO-CHIP which takes some from behavior from SCHIP and CHIP-8E. CHIP-8 was most commonly implemented on 4K systems, such as the Cosmac VIP and the Telmac 1800. These machines had 4096 (0x1000) memory locations, all of which are 8 bits (a byte ) which
7752-446: The other two. For Windows 95 and 98, which do not have QBasic installed by default, they can be copied from the installation disc, which will have a set of directories for old and optional software; other missing commands like Exe2Bin and others are in these same directories. The various Microsoft, Lotus, and Corel office suites and related products are programmable with Visual Basic in one form or another, including LotusScript , which
7854-443: The physical states of the underlying storage or device is a matter of convention, and different assignments may be used even within the same device or program . It may be physically implemented with a two-state device. A contiguous group of binary digits is commonly called a bit string , a bit vector, or a single-dimensional (or multi-dimensional) bit array . A group of eight bits is called one byte , but historically
7956-426: The release of VB version 3.0, which is widely considered the first relatively stable version. Microsoft also spun it off as Visual Basic for Applications and Embedded Visual Basic . While many advanced programmers still scoffed at its use, VB met the needs of small businesses efficiently as by that time, computers running Windows 3.1 had become fast enough that many business-related processes could be completed "in
8058-517: The representation of 0 . Different logic families require different voltages, and variations are allowed to account for component aging and noise immunity. For example, in transistor–transistor logic (TTL) and compatible circuits, digit values 0 and 1 at the output of a device are represented by no higher than 0.4 V and no lower than 2.6 V, respectively; while TTL inputs are specified to recognize 0.8 V or below as 0 and 2.2 V or above as 1 . Bits are transmitted one at
8160-440: The same power as C# and Java but with syntax that reflects the original Basic language, and also features some cross-platform capability through implementations such as Mono-Basic . The IDE , with its event-driven GUI builder , was also influential on other rapid application development tools, most notably Borland Software 's Delphi for Object Pascal and its own descendants such as Lazarus . Mainstream support for
8262-424: The size of the byte is not strictly defined. Frequently, half, full, double and quadruple words consist of a number of bytes which is a low power of two. A string of four bits is usually a nibble . In information theory , one bit is the information entropy of a random binary variable that is 0 or 1 with equal probability, or the information that is gained when the value of such a variable becomes known. As
8364-577: The thickness of alternating black and white lines. The bit is not defined in the International System of Units (SI). However, the International Electrotechnical Commission issued standard IEC 60027 , which specifies that the symbol for binary digit should be 'bit', and this should be used in all multiples, such as 'kbit', for kilobit. However, the lower-case letter 'b' is widely used as well and
8466-452: The third of the default engines along with VBScript, JScript, and the numerous proprietary or open source engines which can be installed like PerlScript , a couple of Rexx-based engines, Python, Ruby, Tcl, Delphi, XLNT, PHP, and others; meaning that the two versions of Basic can be used along with the other mentioned languages, as well as LotusScript, in a WSF file, through the component object model, and other WSH and VBA constructions. VBScript
8568-407: The tiny main memory available on these machines, often 4 KB, a variety of Tiny BASIC dialects were also created. BASIC was available for almost any system of the era, and became the de facto programming language for home computer systems that emerged in the late 1970s. These PCs almost always had a BASIC interpreter installed by default, often in the machine's firmware or sometimes on
8670-556: The two possible values of one bit of storage are not equally likely, that bit of storage contains less than one bit of information. If the value is completely predictable, then the reading of that value provides no information at all (zero entropic bits, because no resolution of uncertainty occurs and therefore no information is available). If a computer file that uses n bits of storage contains only m < n bits of information, then that information can in principle be encoded in about m bits, at least on
8772-444: The two values of a bit may be represented by two levels of electric charge stored in a capacitor . In certain types of programmable logic arrays and read-only memory , a bit may be represented by the presence or absence of a conducting path at a certain point of a circuit. In optical discs , a bit is encoded as the presence or absence of a microscopic pit on a reflective surface. In one-dimensional bar codes , bits are encoded as
8874-412: The widespread success predicted earlier was not to be. The emergence of minicomputers during the same period, and especially low-cost microcomputers in the mid-1970s, allowed anyone to purchase and run their own systems rather than buy online time which was typically billed at dollars per minute. BASIC, by its very nature of being small, was naturally suited to porting to the minicomputer market, which
8976-469: Was HP Time-Shared BASIC , which, like the original Dartmouth system, used two computers working together to implement a time-sharing system. The first, a low-end machine in the HP 2100 series, was used to control user input and save and load their programs to tape or disk. The other, a high-end version of the same underlying machine, ran the programs and generated output. For a cost of about $ 100,000, one could own
9078-407: Was a simple matter to type in the code from the magazine and execute the program. Different magazines were published featuring programs for specific computers, though some BASIC programs were considered universal and could be used in machines running any variant of BASIC (sometimes with minor adaptations). Many books of type-in programs were also available, and in particular, Ahl published versions of
9180-451: Was also used in Morse code (1844) and early digital communications machines such as teletypes and stock ticker machines (1870). Ralph Hartley suggested the use of a logarithmic measure of information in 1928. Claude E. Shannon first used the word "bit" in his seminal 1948 paper " A Mathematical Theory of Communication ". He attributed its origin to John W. Tukey , who had written
9282-515: Was as simple as that." Kemeny and Kurtz had made two previous experiments with simplified languages, DARSIMCO (Dartmouth Simplified Code) and DOPE (Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment) . These did not progress past a single freshman class. New experiments using Fortran and ALGOL followed, but Kurtz concluded these languages were too tricky for what they desired. As Kurtz noted, Fortran had numerous oddly formed commands, notably an "almost impossible-to-memorize convention for specifying
9384-819: Was co-written by Bill Gates , Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff for their newly formed company, Micro-Soft. This was released by MITS in punch tape format for the Altair 8800 shortly after the machine itself, immediately cementing BASIC as the primary language of early microcomputers. Members of the Homebrew Computer Club began circulating copies of the program, causing Gates to write his Open Letter to Hobbyists , complaining about this early example of software piracy . Partially in response to Gates's letter, and partially to make an even smaller BASIC that would run usefully on 4 KB machines, Bob Albrecht urged Dennis Allison to write their own variation of
9486-647: Was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn. In addition to the programming language, Kemeny and Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS), which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs simultaneously on remote terminals. This general model became popular on minicomputer systems like
9588-542: Was due to their work with RAND Corporation , who had purchased a PDP-6 to run their JOSS language, which was conceptually very similar to BASIC. This led DEC to introduce a smaller, cleaned up version of JOSS known as FOCAL , which they heavily promoted in the late 1960s. However, with timesharing systems widely offering BASIC, and all of their competition in the minicomputer space doing the same, DEC's customers were clamoring for BASIC. After management repeatedly ignored their pleas, David H. Ahl took it upon himself to buy
9690-415: Was emerging at the same time as the time-sharing services. These machines had small main memory , perhaps as little as 4 KB in modern terminology, and lacked high-performance storage like hard drives that make compilers practical. On these systems, BASIC was normally implemented as an interpreter rather than a compiler due to its lower requirement for working memory. A particularly important example
9792-503: Was for hobbyist video game development , as game creation systems and readily available game engines were still in their infancy. The Atari ST had STOS BASIC while the Amiga had AMOS BASIC for this purpose. Microsoft first exhibited BASIC for game development with DONKEY.BAS for GW-BASIC , and later GORILLA.BAS and NIBBLES.BAS for QuickBASIC . QBasic maintained an active game development community, which helped later spawn
9894-419: Was heavily patterned on FORTRAN II; statements were one-to-a-line, numbers were used to indicate the target of loops and branches, and many of the commands were similar or identical to Fortran. However, the syntax was changed wherever it could be improved. For instance, the difficult to remember DO loop was replaced by the much easier to remember FOR I = 1 TO 10 STEP 2 , and the line number used in
9996-460: Was often stored as the position of a mechanical lever or gear, or the presence or absence of a hole at a specific point of a paper card or tape . The first electrical devices for discrete logic (such as elevator and traffic light control circuits , telephone switches , and Konrad Zuse's computer) represented bits as the states of electrical relays which could be either "open" or "closed". When relays were replaced by vacuum tubes , starting in
10098-507: Was recommended by the IEEE 1541 Standard (2002) . In contrast, the upper case letter 'B' is the standard and customary symbol for byte. Multiple bits may be expressed and represented in several ways. For convenience of representing commonly reoccurring groups of bits in information technology, several units of information have traditionally been used. The most common is the unit byte , coined by Werner Buchholz in June 1956, which historically
10200-437: Was such that textbooks once included simple "Try It In BASIC" exercises that encouraged students to experiment with mathematical and computational concepts on classroom or home computers. Popular computer magazines of the day typically included type-in programs . Futurist and sci-fi writer David Brin mourned the loss of ubiquitous BASIC in a 2006 Salon article as have others who first used computers during this era. In turn,
10302-541: Was used in the punched cards invented by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon (1732), developed by Joseph Marie Jacquard (1804), and later adopted by Semyon Korsakov , Charles Babbage , Herman Hollerith , and early computer manufacturers like IBM . A variant of that idea was the perforated paper tape . In all those systems, the medium (card or tape) conceptually carried an array of hole positions; each position could be either punched through or not, thus carrying one bit of information. The encoding of text by bits
10404-405: Was used to represent the group of bits used to encode a single character of text (until UTF-8 multibyte encoding took over) in a computer and for this reason it was used as the basic addressable element in many computer architectures . The trend in hardware design converged on the most common implementation of using eight bits per byte, as it is widely used today. However, because of
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