My First BASIC Program


The TI Terminal

In 1977, at Boronia High School, our Maths teacher Mrs Taggart ran a computer programming class as a minor elective. Having been fascinated by computers since I was a small child, this was an obvious choice for me. Mrs Taggart brought a Texas Instruments thermal printing terminal to class, and, using the accoustic coupler modem on the back, connected us to a timesharing system running BASIC at Monash University. Each student took turns at typing in and running their programs. Nearly three decades later, I still have the printout of my very first session in front of a computer. In it, I successfully enter and run my program to convert centimetres to inches, and then get hopelessly confused and frustrated by an error, before, I suspect, the teacher came over and sorted it out for me.

The Printout


NEW SUM2

READY

10        INPUT C
20	  LET I\I T\
ILLEGAL VERB AT LINE 20

READY

20        LET I=C*2.55
30        PRINT "INCHES="I
40        EN$

ILLEGAL VERB AT LINE 40

READY

40        END
REPLACE

READY

RUN
SUM2      02:09 PM       26-OCT-77
?
10
INCHES= 25.5

READY

1.5
ILLEGAL VERB AT LINE 1

READY
$_\_\

WHERE
WHAT?
CFIQPAVC!A
WHERE
WHAT?
READY

WHERE IS ILLEGAL VERB
WHAT?

READY

10        INPUT C
RUN
SUM2      02:13 PM       26-OCT-77
ILLEGAL STATEMENT AT LINE 1

READY

WHERE IS ILLEGAL STATEMENT AT LINE 1
WHAT?

READY

HALLO
WHAT?

READY

10        INPUT C
RU\U\
WHAT?

READY



RUN
SUM2      02:17 PM       26-OCT-77
ILLEGAL STATEMENT AT LINE 1

READY

$ON\NO\


RUN
SUM2      02:17 PM       26-OCT-77
ILLEGAL STATEMENT AT LINE 1

READY

1         \        \A=8
RUN
SUM2      02:18 PM       26-OCT-77
? 1.5
INCHES= 3.825

READY

RUN
SUM2      02:18 PM       26-OCT-77
? 6
INCHES= 15.3

READY

It's probably obvious, but what confused me was when I typed in "1.5" to convert it to inches without first running the program, which created a non-sensical line 1. Not understanding that, I assumed that "LINE 1" referred to the first line in my program, line 10, which I re-entered a couple of times. The "1 A=8" looks like the work of the teacher, although maybe I figured it out - I don't remember now.

What's vaguely disturbing is that I just noticed the program itself has a bug - it's converting from inches to cm, not the other way as intended.... Doh!

Anyway, that's my first ten minutes in front of a real live computer. Thus began a life of programming...

Patrick Jordan - patrick@ariel.com.au - 2005-03-31