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   Matt Campbell (matt@toot.cafe)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:41:47 JST Matt Campbell

   It seems to me that some of the approachability that BASIC brought to programming, first on time-sharing computers and then on early personal computers, has never been fully recovered since the rise of the GUI. Sure, you can write line-oriented programs with linear (as opposed to event-driven) control flow in modern languages, but they're confined to running in a terminal, and most people find that arcane, especially since the rise of mobile devices. 1/?

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     Matt Campbell (matt@toot.cafe)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:41:46 JST Matt Campbell

     in reply to

     So to fill a niche that seems underserved, I'm thinking of hacking together a little JavaScript front-end framework, tentatively called Basic.js (the name seems to be available). I would provide it as a template for users to use as the starting point of their project, consisting of a library JavaScript module (the titular "basic.js" file), a boilerplate index.html file, and a main.js file with a little boilerplate for the main program. 3/?

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     Matt Campbell (matt@toot.cafe)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:41:47 JST Matt Campbell

     in reply to

     Just to make sure I'm clear, what I mean by line-oriented programs with linear control flow is that the program writes some output, then waits on some user input, and keeps going that way. Of course, there's branching and looping, but none of the complexity of event-driven GUIs, whether desktop, web, or mobile. Think of classic BASIC games like Lunar Lander or Oregon Trail (the original version). 2/?

     alcinnz repeated this.