In the early 1980s, the people of Sweden had to be taught to program! This was the next step. In many ways, this ended up bearing fruit and the 8-bit computers taught a generation to become developers, demo creators and it-architects. But it didn’t happen the way everyone expected: through the joys of Basic.
Playlist:
00:00 Flashback – tracks from the past – Show intro
00:10 DJ Daemon: “We need to build computers for the masses, not the classes”. With those immortal words, Commodore’s CEO Jack Tramiel, threw his hat in the ring. In the early 80s, many companies knew that soon enough, everyone would sit a home programming in Basic and the world will change. It’s not exactly what ended up happening, but it was quite a ride. Today we’ll discuss the home computing and the Basic era seen from a Swedish perspective.
00:45 Poi5oN – For All We Know
04:55 DJ Daemon: The text says, “Land on Jupiter with the people’s computer VIC-20”. You may be excused if you believe those words came from the Soviet Union or Red China, but no… It was written in Swedish in an advert from Handic. The VIC-20 was meant to be the computer dad used to calculate with spreadsheets, mom stored her cookie recipes, and the kids play games on. And it kinda went a bit like that in the beginning. But it was expensive here in Sweden! Prices from various sources, adjusted for inflation and converted to today’s dollar value says it all. In 1983, a Texas Instruments 99 with 16K RAM cost about 750 dollars, and Spectrum 48K set you back 900 dollars and a VIC-20 also 750 dollars.
05:57 Alex Menchi – Metamorphose
09:51 DJ Daemon: Among my stuff, I found a diskette for my old C64. It had a lot of Swedish software developer “Grana Software’s” programs. Those were trivial tax calculators, databases, and other software that pretty much anyone could cobble together. Amazingly enough, they were written in Basic, which meant you could read the code and edit it. It also made it impossible to stop anyone from copying it. Despite this they were able to sell this software for several years during the 8-bit era.
10:30 V.E.M – Irrespective of Age
17:22 DJ Daemon: So, Basic. A much-maligned programming language that just had to be included in all home computers during the first years in the 80s. What it lacked in speed, finesse, and capability, it made up for in ease to use. Anyone could learn to build programs and very limited games with it. The Commodore 64 had a primitive Basic from Microsoft. Yes! That Microsoft. It lacked most advanced functions. You had to write directly into the memory addresses to change a lot of stuff. The cool kids learned to write superior programs in assembly language and thus “talking directly to the computer’s processors”.
18:12 Jiyoshi – Having a Blast!
20:34 DJ Daemon: My father bought a Texas Instruments TI99 home computer. It was very advanced for its time and partially 16-bit in an era where the others just had 8 bits. It came with a decent Basic that could be improved with the “TI Extended basic” module, that you plugged into the computer like a Nintendo game cartridge. It was a more… hehum… advanced basic, if I may use that oxymoron… And it pretty much made it possible to work with graphics and sound. My father built a Donkey Kong clone for me and a birthday program with a song from the smurfs.
21:22 Kevin Chow – The Epic
26:15 DJ Daemon: Basic seemed to be the future, but it was just not meant to be. The first Amiga that came out in 1985 had a properly branded version from Microsoft, that shipped with the operating system. Even my Amiga 500 came with it on Workbench 1.3. I hated it, as it was slow as morass. It was performing worse in some instances than my Commodore 64 basic. But when languages such as Pascal, C and assembly language got more popular, it made Basic obsolete by the end of the 80s.
26:59 Aceman – Cold Smoke
30:09 DJ Daemon: My first program in C64 basic was a School Utility, called… drumroll… School Utility. It featured a primitive calendar, a task list, and the possibility to store, edit, view and print a school schedule. I smile every time I load it into my C64 and see just how serious I was in creating it. I had my own “company” called ERICADE and called myself Steelpulse and Systeme 1. Not entirely sure why. That disappeared swiftly, but ERICADE seems to follow me around. And later I took the name Daemon.
30:53 Algar – They gave me my life back
34:59 DJ Daemon: As computers got more advanced, operating systems began loading from diskettes and later hard drives. And in that era. As I previously said, better programming options came available. And if you didn’t like them, you could get your own. In the days of the C64, “Simons basic” was one of the few upgrades available for those still wanting to do Basic. I got Pascal for my Amiga and later learned the scripting language Arexx, which still makes me happy when I think about it. Maybe nothing today, but back then, I could automate everything. I wrote loads of scripts for my BBS.
35:45 SofT MANiAC – Dance with me
38:25 DJ Daemon: When did the home computer era die? The way I see it, and this I’ve said in previous episodes, it was in the 90s as the PC and Mac could play all the cool games and give you access to all the useful business software. At that time, there were no place for a dedicated “at home computer”. When did Basic die? As I just said, it could really compete when it wasn’t delivering on a chip inside the computer. It’s really that simple. Basic stands for “Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code”. Yeah, maybe I should have started by saying that.
39:09 DRAX of MoN – Boat on the road
43:04 DJ Daemon: Boat on the road. How does that even work? What about the Nevoke demo party? No tracked music compos.
43:44 Ben-Jam – Heaven watching us
47:26 DJ Daemon: New jingles.
47:58 Grubi of Brs – Beans and Rusk
53:27 DJ Daemon: summary.
53:58 Hunz – I am way one son
58:02 DJ Daemon: Leading you into the good night. Jesper Kyd.
58:28 Jesper Kyd – Space song
Production notes:
I have long wanted to talk about how Basic was to be the start of a revolution and how it kinda started a revolution it wasn't really to be a big part of. It was a cool story and I ended up telling it pretty well.
Colophon:
Right, it's just a word play. Basic and basics of... Sometimes Basics and fundamentals can be used interchangedy. So can Basic and "crappy programming language".
Tags: Storytelling, Retro history, Host: DJ Daemon, 2021
