Welcome to my 'Basic Guru' web page. Many thanks to Dave Navarro for flattering me with the offer of posting a web page here with the Basic Gurus.
I'm not sure if anyone is interested in my background, but here goes. From about 1958 when I was 10 years old, I wanted to become a scientist. By the time I was in high school, I had decided to become a physicist. While in college studying physics and math, I encountered my first computer programming class in Univac 1050II assembly, followed shortly by COBOL. I immediately knew that I had found my calling as a programmer, and have never looked back. I remember thinking in my early programming days "You mean they actually pay me to do this?"
In 1968 I joined the Air Force, and programmed in IBM 1401 assembly, COBOL, and Burroughs Medium Systems assembly for four years. I was fortunate enough to be able to actually operate the mainframe hardware on occasion, and work with the operating system. In 1972 I got out of the Air Force and started work for Burroughs Corporation as a software tech for their Medium Systems computers. I worked at Burroughs for two years, then Jefferson County, Alabama for five and a half years. In 1980 I started my own consulting company, Sun Valley Systems, and have worked as a computer consultant ever since, mostly developing custom computer software. For the last twelve years or so I've averaged around 200,000 lines of code per year. My lifetime total over some 30+ years is probably around 4 to 5 million lines, written in about 40 computer languages and dialects.
My first encounter with BASIC came around 1975. I was working as Systems Manager at Jefferson County when we installed a BASIC timesharing system for the county engineers. Naturally, the first thing we did was load Star Trek! Wow! Was that fun! I have loved BASIC ever since. When I started doing Microcomputer (we didn't call them PC's until 1981) development in 1977, BASIC was a natural, because it was the only language available on most Microcomputers. My first PC was a Polymorphic 8813, a 1.88Mhz 8080 system with 32k RAM and two 90k floppy drives. Cost me over $4000 in 1977! Since that time, coding in BASIC has been virtually an every day thing for me. I have written applications in BASIC for business applications such as Accounts Receivable, special purpose applications such as a Land Surveyor's System, and many fun programs such as a Kaleidoscope screen saver which appeared on the cover of several magazines, various games and graphics programs, calculator programs, and other fun goodies. Some of the BASIC's I have owned (except for Burroughs BASIC) and used professionally are:
Burroughs Medium Systems BASIC Interpreter
Polymorphic 88 (8080) BASIC Interpreter
TRS-80 Color Computer BASIC Interpreter
TRS-80 Model I/II/III BASIC Interpreter
Apple II Integer BASIC Interpreter
Apple II AppleSoft BASIC Interpreter
CBASIC (8080) Compiler
Microsoft BASIC80 (8080) Interpreter
Microsoft BASCOM80 (8080) Compiler
IBM PC BASIC/BASICA Interpreter
Microsoft GWBASIC Interpreter
IBM PC 1.x/2.x BASIC Compiler
Borland 1.x Turbo BASIC Compiler
Microsoft 1.x/2.x/3.x/4.x QuickBasic
Microsoft PDS 6.x/7.x Compiler
Microsoft Visual Basic for DOS
Microsoft Word BASIC
Microsoft 1.x/3.x/4.x/5.x Visual Basic
Microsoft 95/97 Visual Basic for Applications
These days I program mostly in COBOL, QuickBasic, C, VB, VC++ and occasional assembly. I love BASIC, especially for writing utility programs and prototyping algorithms. Nothing, but nothing, beats BASIC for these tasks. The majority of my 'work' programming is on mainframes in COBOL, as well as a lot of utility programs for work, which are written in BASIC and sometimes C, but the majority of my 'fun' programming is in BASIC on the PC.
Since I do custom programming and consulting for a living, I work most of the time in my home office, barefooted, wearing shorts and a tee-shirt (Thank God! I hate ties!). My current office systems are a Dell PII450, a Gateway PII400, a Gateway P200 and an IBM Thinkpad 770e PII266, with a total of about 36GB hard disk online. They're all networked using Windows 9x and 100base/TX ethernet. For communications I have two voice lines (one for my wife) a fax line, two modem lines plus an ISDN line. I should get birthday and Chirstmas cards from BellSouth.
I really enjoy helping budding programmers in the Internet newsgroups. After spending decades learning, what a waste to never pass anything along to others. I remember my early programming days when many people gave their time and knowledge to help me. The programs, routines and files below are just a few of the many that I have written over some twenty-five years of BASIC programming. I have placed them into the Public Domain, you may download and use them as you wish. If you find them useful, encounter a bug, or have other comments, please let me know.
The following programs run/compile using QuickBasic or MS PDS 7.1, and most run under QBasic. If you compile using PDS 7.1, remember to change 'QB.BI' to 'QBX.BI' in the $INCLUDE metacommands, where they appear.
2FILES.ZIP 583 02-01-99 How to input two file names in COMMAND$ ACOS.ZIP 769 02-01-99 ACOS function without intrinsic ALLBASE.ZIP 559 02-01-99 Convert a decimal number to bases 2-36 ALLCOMB.ZIP 588 02-01-99 Prints all combinations N items of M ALLWORDS.ZIP 603 02-01-99 Prints all words of Size Min to Max ASIN.ZIP 752 02-01-99 ASIN function without intrinsic ATAN.ZIP 767 02-01-99 ATAN function without intrinsic ATN2.ZIP 548 02-01-99 ATN(dy,dx) resolving quadrant BASECONV.ZIP 797 02-01-99 Convert number from any base to any base (2-36) BIN$.ZIP 479 02-01-99 Convert number to binary string BIN2HEX.ZIP 600 02-01-99 Convert binary string to hex string CALENDAR.ZIP 4,625 02-01-99 Prints one page calendar with holidays COMB.ZIP 599 02-01-99 Prints all combinations of N items from set of M COS.ZIP 460 02-01-99 COS function without intrinsic DEC2FRAC.ZIP 976 02-01-99 Convert decimal to fraction (nn.nn to dd nn/dd) EASTER.ZIP 719 02-01-99 Calculate date of Easter for any year EGACOLOR.ZIP 673 02-01-99 Display EGA color palette remap table EULER.ZIP 477 02-01-99 TAN function without intrinsic EXP.ZIP 435 02-01-99 EXP (e^x) function without intrinsic FAC!.ZIP 667 02-01-99 Factorial using iterative & recursive FACTOR.ZIP 578 02-01-99 Find roots of quadratic equation Ax^2+Bx+C GCD.ZIP 467 02-01-99 Greatest Common Divisor using Euclid's algorithm KEY.ZIP 398 02-01-99 Display keyboard code for key pressed LCM.ZIP 507 02-01-99 Lowest Common Multiple LISTFILE.ZIP 869 02-01-99 List ASCII file with header, line numbers LISTONLY.ZIP 909 02-01-99 List ASCII file with header only LN.ZIP 458 02-01-99 Natural logarithm ln() function without intrinsic LONGEST.ZIP 550 02-01-99 Display longest line in text file PASSWORD.ZIP 608 02-01-99 Random alphanumeric password generator PDUMP.ZIP 863 02-01-99 Print dump of file in format similar to DEBUG PERM.ZIP 613 02-01-99 Prints all permutations of N items from set of M PI.ZIP 464 02-01-99 Calculate PI POKE.ZIP 543 02-01-99 Display character or string using POKE POWER.ZIP 455 02-01-99 Calculate integer power function without intrinsic POWER2.ZIP 922 02-01-99 Test integer to be power of 2 PRIMETST.ZIP 552 02-01-99 Test integers for Primality PRNTEST.ZIP 517 02-01-99 Test Printer Ready SIN.ZIP 483 02-01-99 SIN function without intrinsic SORTSHEL.ZIP 1,159 02-01-99 Demo for Shell-Metzner Sort SQRT.ZIP 482 02-01-99 SQR function without intrinsic STRSORT.ZIP 473 02-01-99 Sort letters in a character string TESTADAP.ZIP 905 02-01-99 Test for video adapter type TIMER.ZIP 541 02-01-99 Prototype to time nnn loops of code WEEKDAY.ZIP 604 02-01-99 Day of week from date using Zeller's Congruence
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
Jud's Personal Web Page with BASIC, C and COBOL stuff