Programming in GW-BASIC provides a reference guide on GW-Basic along with a range of extra commands and functions. The book discusses starting a program, program planning and the essentials of GW-Basic, including the most commonly used commands; how data is stored in memory; how a program fits together; and the use of the keyboard and screen in editing. The text also describes graphics and color and the string-handling functions. The principles and concepts of program structures, such as the Paintbox program and chaining, and the use of the Turtle graphics, such as Logo and DRAW, are also considered. The book covers two of the key techniques for handling data in quantity (sorting into order and searching for specific items), statistical analysis, and display program. The text then tackles PEEK and POKE, which examine sections of memory and serve as alternative to PRINT for creating screen displays, and advanced graphics, which enables one to analyze the screen, develop first a double-size print utility, then a sprite designer and some movement routines. The selection is useful to computer programmers and students taking computer courses.
If you've always wanted to learn basic programming skills on your personal computer, but weren't sure where to start, here's the book you need. You can satisfy your curiousity about programming and establish excellent programming fundamentals for your future ventures into QuickBASIC or Turbo BASIC.
Written for anyone with either GW-BASIC or BASICA, Albrecht helps users build on applications using graphics, sound, and text. With hands-on exercises and skill checks, readers learn how to write programs for increasing business and personal productivity, as well as for entertainment. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
GW-BASIC® Self-Teaching Guide Wiley Self-Teaching Guides are designed for first-time users of specific computer applications and programming languages. These practical guides follow a logical progression that takes you step-by-step from the basics to advanced techniques. Each book enables you to measure your progress and learn at your own pace. With Wiley Self-Teaching Guides, learning to master computers is easy, rewarding, and fun. Written for personal computer users with no programming experience, this guide offers a thorough introduction to BASIC programming. This book explains programming logic, structured approaches, effective programming practices, basic debugging techniques, and much more. Writing complete programs and routines Performing basic arithmetic operations Creating and using files, controlling program flow, and managing various data types Creating and working with string data, numeric data, arrays, and graphics Trapping and handling errors Handling input and output to the console and printer You’ll also get information on: GW-BASIC Programs Decisions, Branching, and Loops Branching and Debugging Sequential Files Random Files Other I/O Working with Graphics
GW-BASIC isn't dead yet.A Microsoft product of the early 1980s, GW-BASIC and its direct successors were loaded into more personal computers than any other programming language in history. GW-BASIC was a line-numbered, unstructured, loosely procedural high-level programming environment that immediately set you down in the thick of it: confronted with an Ok prompt, cursor blinking, the language interpreter made no bones about its high-level expectations of you. Algorithms, some just as complex as anything being coded these days, could be fashioned in GW-BASIC; program in the language now, and you'll experience a particular type of joy that attends to a successful solution of a new-world coding problem that, samurai-like, you are somehow able to slay using an old-world unstructured language.Mark Jones Lorenzo first wrote about GW-BASIC in "Not Ok," arguing that reports of its death were greatly exaggerated--and proving it by offering a cookbook of engaging and cutting-edge algorithmic type-in recipes, earmarked for immediate consumption. And now it's time for a second helping. If "Not Ok" was the appetizer, then "Ok" is the main course, containing delicious recipes for even more complex programs that stretch GW-BASIC to its absolute limits while satiating the most discriminating programmers. Inside these pages you'll find the ingredients for cooking up Turing machines, the Game of Life, tic-tac-toe, the card game baccarat, a slider puzzle, an analog clock, permutation and combination generators, a slot machine, the Tower of Hanoi, an "outguessing machine," a decimal-to-fraction converter, a statistical bootstrapping routine, and several recursive algorithms, among many other programs--including playable versions of a handful of classic arcade games of a bygone era.In addition, GW-BASIC goes head-to-head with an object-oriented programming language that's more than just another flavor of the month: Java. Will the ragtag GW-BASIC hold its own against the unalloyed Goliath-like forces of modernity? Or will it finally succumb to the ravages of time (and a leviathan language), revealing itself to be well past its expiration date? The fate of GW-BASIC lies in your hands.* GW-BASIC is a registered trademark of the Microsoft Corporation, which did not in any way endorse or assist in the production of this product.
Modelled on the popular Learn C Now this is a completely integrated self-study course that is guaranteed to make BASIC programming as fun to use as it is useful to know. Everything needed to learn modelled, structured programming is on the three disks included
Microsoft GW-BASIC greets you with a simple user prompt: Ok. An invitation to a world of possibility, the Ok prompt presents a blank canvas with which to code a masterpiece. But GW-BASIC, released over three decades ago, has sadly fallen into disuse, its decline greatly hastened once graphical user interfaces like Windows began to proliferate, leaving text-based MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) programs to wither away. And that's just not ok. In "Not Ok," Mark Jones Lorenzo argues that GW-BASIC still has much to offer both the budding and experienced programmer. Packed with delicious type-in algorithmic recipes to stew, "Not Ok" is the last in a long line of mashup BASIC cookbooks that once transformed coding into a delectable romantic pursuit. With the recipes will come the inspiration to cook up your own algorithms, in turn sharpening your programming chops while keeping GW-BASIC fresh and alive. But "Not Ok" is not meant to be an exhaustive tour through GW-BASIC history or commands or statements or functions, nor is it intended as some kind of learn-GW-BASIC-in-ten-easy-steps tutorial, nor is it designed as some sort of teleological work, although it contains bits of all of those things. Instead, this book brushes up against the absolute limits of the GW-BASIC interpreter toolbox, only presenting you with a dose of mathematics when absolutely necessary, whilst shying away from PEEKs, POKEs, and other assembly language-type subroutines. Appropriately, "Not Ok"'s scope is especially vast; the approach is meant to be as accessible as possible while also not sparing many details, serving as both a GW-BASIC appetizer and a main course. And unlike most other computer programming books, in which the keywords or the concepts are the focus, here the programs are the centerpiece from which everything else follows. "Not Ok" rekindles an itch, reminding erstwhile BASIC programmers of the supreme satisfaction (coupled with a heavy dose of nostalgia) to be had while coding in GW-BASIC, and maybe, just maybe, can also introduce the programming language, with all of its simple pleasures and lovable foibles, to a younger set. So don't cue the funeral dirge just yet. With a little luck, and a generous helping of "Not Ok," perhaps a requiem won't be needed for GW-BASIC after all. * GW-BASIC is a registered trademark of the Microsoft Corporation, which did not in any way endorse or assist in the production of this product.
"Endless Loop" chronicles the complete history of the BASIC programming language--from its humble beginnings at Dartmouth College, to its widespread adoption and dominance in education, to its decline and subsequent modern rebirth.In the early morning hours of May 1, 1964, Dartmouth College birthed fraternal twins: BASIC, the Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code programming language, and, simultaneously, the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS). It hadn't been an easy birth, and the gestation period was likewise difficult. BASIC was primarily the idea of one man, mathematics professor John Kemeny, a brilliant Hungarian mathematician who had once been an assistant to Albert Einstein, while the DTSS satisfied the vision of another, mathematics and statistics professor Thomas Kurtz, who had brought a democratizing spirit to Dartmouth's campus in the form of free computing for all.BASIC and DTSS caught on at Dartmouth quickly, with a vast majority of undergraduates (and faculty) making use of the computer system via teletypewriters only several years after its inception. But by the early 1970s, with the personal computer revolution fast approaching, Kemeny and Kurtz began to lose control over BASIC as it achieved widespread popularity outside of Dartmouth. The language was being adapted to run on a wide variety of computers, some much too short of memory to contain the full set of Dartmouth BASIC features. Most notably, Microsoft built its business on the back of ROM-based BASIC interpreters for a variety of microcomputers. Although the language was ubiquitous in schools by the early 1980s, it came under attack by such notables as computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra for its lack of structure as well as by Kemeny and Kurtz themselves, who viewed non-Dartmouth "Street BASIC" as blasphemous and saw it as their mission to right the ship through language standardization and the release of True BASIC. But by then it was too late: the era of BASIC's global dominance was over.In "Endless Loop," author Mark Jones Lorenzo documents the history and development of Dartmouth BASIC, True BASIC, Tiny BASIC, Microsoft BASIC--including Altair BASIC, Applesoft BASIC, Color BASIC, Commodore BASIC, TRS-80 Level II BASIC, TI BASIC, IBM BASICA/GW-BASIC, QuickBASIC/QBASIC, Visual Basic, and Small Basic--as well as 9845 BASIC, Atari BASIC, BBC BASIC, CBASIC, Locomotive BASIC, MacBASIC, QB64, Simons' BASIC, Sinclair BASIC, SuperBASIC, and Turbo Basic/PowerBASIC, among a number of other implementations.The ascendance of BASIC paralleled the emergence of the personal computer, so the story of BASIC is first and foremost a story--actually, many interlocking stories--about computers. But it is also a tale of talented people who built a language out of a set of primal ingredients: sweat, creativity, rivalry, jealousy, cooperation, and plain hard work, and then set the language loose in a world filled with unintended consequences. How those unintended consequences played out, leading to the demise of the most popular computer language the world has ever known, is the focus of "Endless Loop."
