h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A579855

So, I've been kicking this entry about for the last few months, after talking to one of the inventors and going through museum files to get the info right, and I am hoping to find out what folks think of it. Is it readable and does the writing make sense? Is it to broken up?
Thanks
Chris

Sounds good, and shouldn't have problems to get into the Edited Guide!

I remember that the original IBM PC had a BASIC interpreter built into its BIOS ROM. Took me some time to find out that I had to type in 'SYSTEM' in order to get back to the DOS prompt!

A little point: There's the ... GuideML tag which you should use to separate (P)aragraphs in order to make them look better:
ThisIsAParagraph
ThisIsAnother


You might consider making the entry part of the University Project 'An Introduction to Programming', http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A537635.


And, last but not least, here's The H2G2 Programmers' Corner: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A604937

See you over there

still nothing about bbc basic though.

(see basic's not dead thread)

BBC basic? what's that please (where is that thread)?

I've made a few changes. BBCBASIC is almost impossible to find good references on in the US(I found a brief thing on it in an ad for the old Acorn), but I finally found a good site and talked to a user, so I could add it into the entry.
Anything else I should do to the entry?

You should convert to british English: it's 'program' and 'programs' rather than 'programme' and 'programmes'.

Apart from a few missing blanks ('helpedthe', before opening brackets and after closing ones) there's nothing to add or criticise from my side

"Anything else I should do to the entry?" - Yes! Take it to Peer Review

first, the comment is over at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/FFM70793?thread=127195&skip=0&show=20#p1347128

The reason that bbc basic is thought by many to be superior, is due to the amazing number of advanced features that it includes as standard.

It has always included an in-line assembler for the machine that it is on right from day 1. This gives it similar mixed-level capabilities to C.

due to the way the operating system was written on the bbc, you could hook into very low level or very high level machine code functions directly from basic.

It is split into a number of versions, each of which extended basic to cover even more ground.

Basic 1 included procedures and functions, plus local variables, and if then else and repeat until constructs.

from about a year before basic four came out on the bbc master, you could get compilers to turn your basic into machine code. These generally continued to be extended every time a new processor or operating system was supported.

basic 4 included lots of stuff for making large program management easier.

basic 5 extended the language even further by adding the ability for procedure libraries, while endwhile, multi-line if then else otherwise, and generally making the language even more powerfull.

when the archimedes was introduced with basic 5, and a full wimp operating system, you cound not only call the window functions directly, but due to the way the applications were written, you could easily write your own programs which extended them. (the drawing program needed only a fairly trivial set of extensions to make it into a fully customisable ftp package, with the extensions written in bbc basic.

When acorn stopped doing the archimedes in the early 90's, you had bbc basic being a fully structured algol derived language, which could be used in an object-oriented manner, of a similar power to C, or Pascal, but much easier to learn and use.

And there are still people producing new versions of the language which are even more powerfull.

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'The Writing Workshop' to 'BASIC Programming Language'. A new PR thread exists for this rescued Entry: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F57153?thread=143509