Tag: BASIC

A Time to Remember

As I said in my previous post, I wrote programs in BASIC language in 1983.

A seventh-grade student said he could make them faster and easier and he did.

I decided to be a computer user rather than a programmer.

But I decided to recover memories of that experience, found a free compiler, and entered the 181 lines I had written 43 years ago.

Each command in BASIC language has its own line, but to save space, commands here are separated by a ; .
920 Cls ; 921 GoTo 100 ; 930 Print “ENTER ; RADIUS OF CYLINDER END” ; 940 Print ” ” ; 950 Input R ; 960 GoSub 1620 ; 970 Print “ENTER HEIGHT OR LENGTH OF CYLINDER” ; 980 Print ” ” ; 990 Input H ; 1000 A = (6.28 * R * H) + (6.28 * (R ^ 2)) ; 1010 GoTo 1370
The programs that worked then, did not work now, but the compiler told me what lines had errors.

Having the time granted to a retired, near-nonagenarian, I decided to re-learn some code and processes and wrote:
799 Print “CYLINDER – 2 ENDS” ; 800 Print “CYLINDER RADIUS” ; 801 Input R ; 802 GoSub 2000 ; 803 Print “CYLINDER HEIGHT or LENGTH” ; 804 Input H ; 805 GoSub 2000 ; 806 A = (6.28 * R * H) + (6.28 * R ^ 2) ; 807 Print “CYLINDER SURFACE AREA” ; 809 Print A; U$; ” sq” ; 810 GoTo 4000
It took many hours of my granted time reduce it to 166 lines and make it work.

Back in the day, it took a single entry on the Apple II computer to start the program. After several hours of searching, I didn’t find an easy or free way to do this on my 2500 times faster computer.

My experimenting with the BASIC language is over, but if I could remember the name of that seventh grader …

Before AI and …

AI is in front of us or has it been more common than we knew.
Remember seeing old high school senior class pictures with smooth hair and straight teeth?1
Remember voice dubbing for a movie actor who could not sing? 2Marni Nixon was the ghost singer for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. The results were there, but AI did not exist.

The picture in the upper left of this post was not done with AI, but I have been tempted to duplicate it with the current technology.

But what fun would that be?

I do my posts with HTML,3HyperText Markup Language but others find it easier to use another tool for making posts with WordPress. I don’t find it easier to use code,4I’m not a code expert, so I do a lot of cut and paste. I just enjoy it more.

Is using a small piece of code to change font color a form of AI?

In-as-much as technology is/seems to be changing or improving exponentially faster than during the Luddite movement, it doesn’t make sense to me to fight it.

When home computers became available, my children said, “You need to keep up, Dad.”

I wrote two what I thought to be fairly complex programs in BASIC language. A seventh-grade student looked at what I had done and said he could make them faster and easier for other students to use. He did, and I decided I would be a computer user rather than a programmer.

When the parking meter app became available for our smart phone, a granddaughter said, “You need to keep up, Gramps.” And that wasn’t the first prompt I got from grandkids.

So, I said yup again and am happy I did!

Thomas Edison invented a device to record and play back sound. But not to worry, neither will the horseless carriage catch on.