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Discussion on: Why do we use Hello World? - the history behind it

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djquecke profile image
DJ Quecke • Edited

I'm mildly insulted by your term "ancient developers" but that aside, I started learning BASIC in high school on a IBM 360 computer in 1976 and "Hello World" was my first program then. You might want to check IBM BASIC documentation for teachers from that period. I did enjoy your article and like to think I'm approaching "ancient" but not quite there yet.

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just5moreminutes profile image
Just5MoreMinutes • Edited

Using the term ancient probably was a little harsh, sorry about that!
I'll check the documentation and maybe expand on some points or re-write my article partially :)
Thank you so much for your feedback!
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UPDATE: I did intensive research and looked through several BASIC manuals, documentations and books from around 1976, but I sadly didn't find anything!
Still, thank you so much for mentioning that! :) I'm sure it was used a lot for teaching, though it seemingly wasn't yet mentioned in any books...

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djquecke profile image
DJ Quecke

Late night crusing and I found a couple of links I think.
Dartmouth was way ahead of the times in the 60's when they first developed time sharing on a mainframe. Then they developed the BASIC language for these mainframe terminals.

When time sharing was introduced on the IBM\360 they provided the PL/1 and BASIC languages to the terminal users. I also have been unable to find a reference for BAISC on the 360 although I am certain I used it '76, my senior year of high school.

There is a pretty good article at:

time.com/69316/basic/

I also found the textbook I used for APL in '76.

softwarepreservation.org/projects/...

Interesting stuff. Powerful language.

Thanks for your article, it got me thinking of my earliest days with computers.

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Just5MoreMinutes • Edited

Disclaimer: I'm very sorry for the late response!

wow, it's been a while since I last checked up on DEV and I was quite surprised to see any traction on this post!

Anyway, thank you very much for the two links and the additional research! I read through the article and it was very interesting. I learned a lot of new things from it and it was especially exciting to get to know how computers and programming became more mainstream thanks to BASIC. It truly seems to be a powerful language, thanks for sharing the article!

I'm currently checking out the textbook.

Also, I'm glad you enjoyed the article, thank you very much for reading, giving feedback and doing some more research!