Date   : Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:59:31 +0000
From   : Fragula <fragula@...>
Subject: Re: Exile (Re: Zalaga)

W.Scholten wrote:
> --------------
> Something that's peculiar about the period the 8 bit machines were
> popular, is the fact that lots of sources (books, magazine articles) say
> Basic is an acronym and consequently write it as BASIC (supposedly
> standing for 'Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code'). This is
> of course nonsense, even if those who 'designed' the language
> (tremendous overstatement in this case), say so. Noone designs a
> programming language with 'symbolic instruction code' in mind. They just
> made a basic language (hence 'Basic'), then probably thought it wouldn't
> be 'cool' if it wasn't an acronym. Or maybe they were seeing how many
> people they could fool.

I have to take umbrage (or decaf, or something stronger) at this. Its
BASIC, it was BASIC since ever I first heared of it back in the early
70. Probably 1970 or 71, as I was still in "Junior" school, and
considered a terrible swot. This, admittedly was in the "Boys Big Book
Of Computers" or somesuch, but the acronym was there explained then,
with a little explanation of how this worked, in conjunction with paper
and magnetic tape, teletypes, line printers etc. This book also
mentioned Dartmouth college, and 1966.

The first thing I can think of by name is from Omni, in early 1978,
where a full listing of a basic BASIC program was given, with a
blow-by-blow explanation of each line was given in a column to the
right, and a description of the language, and another potted history,
this time crediting the Psychology dept. of Dartmouth College for
lumbering the world with BASIC.

There was also a "Space Rock" album, slightly later, which contained a
message in CUTS, and a short BASIC program as audio on the lead out of
side 2. Might have been Steve Hillage, or Gong, or something like that,
slightly to the left of my normal tastes, though I did have the album,
The cover notes did explain the content as CUTS (Computer Users Tape
System" and gave a little background on "BASIC (Beginners All-purpose
Symbolic Instruction Code)

Ok.. Not strong substantiation of my assertions I'll admit, but some
substantiation nonetheless, with a fair possibility that others on the
list will recall the same book/mag/record, and prevent this rewriting
of what is widely documented history.

As regards Acronyms. I myself tend to backwork them when naming servers.
When I had to "build" a busy looking machine to hijack real estate in a
certain busy shared and contende machine room, I started with a old 386
board in a big tower case stuffed with loads of faulty cdroms and
impressive looking dead stuff, with a 19" monitor that was continuously
cp ing the Linux kernel sources, its logs, whatever, in a loop too fast
for anyone to read.

On the front was a nice printed label "BANDIT" and its IP address, MAC
address etc. and in red "DANGER - CRITICAL SYTEM, DO NOT INTERRUPT OR
TOUCH KEYBOARD"

"Box Assigned as Networks Deadspace Invasion Token" :-)

I will accept that its entirely possible that the acronym was
backworked, but not in the 1980s, or even the 70s for that matter.

Now bearing in mind that nobody much had heared of BASIC until the 70s,
I consider it entirely likely that the acronym came from the original
developers.

Cheers!

M.