Talk:BASIC-8

A fact from BASIC-8 appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 23 August 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that David Ahl purchased BASIC-8 to sell with the PDP-8 when DEC management proved more interested in their own FOCAL language?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/August. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/BASIC-8.

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Software: Computing Low‑importance

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Capsulecap (talk) 18:52, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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... that David Ahl purchased BASIC-8 to sell with the PDP-8 when DEC management proved more interested in their own FOCAL language? Source: Inverview with Ahl - sorry, tjhere's no page numbers, para numbers or any other markers, but Find will turn it up imeddiately.
- ALT1:... that David Ahl purchased BASIC-8 to sell with the PDP-8 when he found no one outside the Boston area wanted to use DEC's FOCAL language? Source: same para

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Dale Snodgrass

Created by Maury Markowitz (talk). Self-nominated at 18:46, 12 August 2021 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

Cited:
Interesting:
Other problems:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: ~~I can't find where it says he purchased BASIC from a Brooklyn programmer.~~ Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:34, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Maury, I can't find where it says he purchased BASIC. The closet I can find in the source is "I hired one group, actually it turned out to be just an individual guy in Brooklyn that developed a Basic for 4KPDP8." FWIW, it also doesn't support "To aid its uptake, Ahl personally ported over several popular FOCAL programs, notably the games Lunar Lander and The Sumerian Game, which he renamed Hamurabi."

While we're here: "COMPILER was not a compiler in the modern sense of the word, as it did not generate machine code" but our definition is "The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that translate source code from a high-level programming language to a lower level language (e.g. assembly language, object code, or machine code) to create an executable program." My understanding is that it was a tokenizer because what it produced was smaller, but still BASIC. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:34, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Hawkeye7: Hired vs. purchased is the concern here? I get hired to produce software and the customers send me purchase orders - but if you feel this is confusing (really?), by all means, change it. As to compiler/tokenizer, the output of COMPILER was BASIC, a high-level language, so it is not a compiler in the modern sense, which, as you note, produces a "lower level language". Am I missing something on this point? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:15, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lunar/Ham ref added BTW. Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:36, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What is being purchased is your labour. The ownership of the software produced belongs to the company that hired you under the work for hire contract. Tweaked the article accordingly, giving the DYK a pass. (NB: Bought a copy of Ahl's book when I was at school. Thought I recognised the name.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:08, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To T:DYK/P6