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Tiny BASIC
Tiny BASIC is a family of dialects of the BASIC programming language that can fit into 4 or fewer KBs of memory. Tiny BASIC was designed by Dennis Allison and the People's Computer Company (PCC) in response to the open letter published by Bill Gates complaining about users pirating Altair BASIC, which sold for $150. Tiny BASIC was intended to be a completely free version of BASIC that would run on the same early microcomputers.
Tiny BASIC was released as a specification, not an implementation, published in the September 1975 issue of the PCC newsletter. The article invited programmers to implement it on their machines and send the resulting assembler language implementation back for inclusion in a series of three planned newsletters. Li-Chen Wang, author of Palo Alto Tiny BASIC, coined the term "copyleft" to describe this concept. The community response was so overwhelming that the newsletter was relaunched as Dr. Dobb's Journal, the first regular periodical to focus on microcomputer software. Dr. Dobb's lasted in print form for 34 years and then online until 2014, when its website became a static archive.
The small size and free source code made these implementations invaluable in the early days of microcomputers in the mid-1970s, when RAM was expensive and typical memory size was only 4 to 8 KB. While the minimal version of Microsoft's Altair BASIC would also run in 4 KB machines, it left only 790 bytes free for BASIC programs. More free space was a significant advantage of Tiny BASIC. To meet these strict size limits, Tiny BASIC dialects generally lacked a variety of features commonly found in other dialects, for instance, most versions lacked string variables, lacked floating-point math, and allowed only single-letter variable names.
Tiny BASIC implementations are still used today, for programming microcontrollers such as the Arduino.
The earliest microcomputers, like the MITS Altair 8800, generally had no built-in input/output (I/O) beyond front-panel switches and LED lamps. Useful work generally required the addition of an I/O expansion card and the use of some form of terminal. At the time, video-based terminals were very expensive, costing much more than the computer, so many users turned to mechanical devices like the Teletype Model 33. The Model 33, like most teleprinters of the era, included a tape punch system intended to allow operators to pre-record their messages and then play them at "high speed", faster than most individuals could type the message live. For the early microcomputers, this provided a convenient computer data storage format, allowing the users to write programs to paper tape and distribute them to other users.
The Homebrew Computer Club met for the first time in March 1975, and its members soon used the meetings to swap software on punched tape. At the June meeting, a tape containing a pre-release version of Altair BASIC disappeared. The tape was given to Steve Dompier, who passed it on to Dan Sokol, who had access to a high-speed tape punch. At the next meeting, 50 copies of Altair BASIC on paper tape appeared in a cardboard box. When Ed Roberts, founder of MITS, learned of this, he stated "Anyone who is using a stolen copy of MITS BASIC should identify himself for what he is, a thief." Bill Gates made this more formal, writing "An Open Letter to Hobbyists", complaining that "As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software."
The complaint was not well received. Among the many responses, Bob Albrecht, another Homebrew member and founder of the People's Computer Company (PCC), felt the best response would be to produce their own BASIC that was completely free to use by anyone. He approached Dennis Allison, a member of the Computer Science faculty at Stanford University, to write a specification for a version of BASIC that would fit in 2 to 3 kilobytes of memory. To aid porting, the design was based on an intermediate language (IL), an interpreter for the interpreter, which meant only a small portion of the total code had to be ported.
Allison's initial design was published in the September 1975 edition of the PCC newsletter, along with an Intel 8080 version of the IL interpreter. The article called on programmers to implement the design on their computer and send the resulting assembly language version back to the PCC. They stated their plans to publish three special newsletters containing these user-submitted versions, along with bug fixes, programs written in the new BASIC, and suggestions and enhancements. The concept gained further notice when it was republished in the January 1976 edition of the ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages. Submissions poured in. Among the notable early versions was Tiny BASIC Extended by Dick Whipple and John Arnold which ran in 3K of RAM, added FOR...NXT loops, and allowed a single numeric array. They avoided the use of the IL and wrote it directly in machine code, using octal.
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Tiny BASIC
Tiny BASIC is a family of dialects of the BASIC programming language that can fit into 4 or fewer KBs of memory. Tiny BASIC was designed by Dennis Allison and the People's Computer Company (PCC) in response to the open letter published by Bill Gates complaining about users pirating Altair BASIC, which sold for $150. Tiny BASIC was intended to be a completely free version of BASIC that would run on the same early microcomputers.
Tiny BASIC was released as a specification, not an implementation, published in the September 1975 issue of the PCC newsletter. The article invited programmers to implement it on their machines and send the resulting assembler language implementation back for inclusion in a series of three planned newsletters. Li-Chen Wang, author of Palo Alto Tiny BASIC, coined the term "copyleft" to describe this concept. The community response was so overwhelming that the newsletter was relaunched as Dr. Dobb's Journal, the first regular periodical to focus on microcomputer software. Dr. Dobb's lasted in print form for 34 years and then online until 2014, when its website became a static archive.
The small size and free source code made these implementations invaluable in the early days of microcomputers in the mid-1970s, when RAM was expensive and typical memory size was only 4 to 8 KB. While the minimal version of Microsoft's Altair BASIC would also run in 4 KB machines, it left only 790 bytes free for BASIC programs. More free space was a significant advantage of Tiny BASIC. To meet these strict size limits, Tiny BASIC dialects generally lacked a variety of features commonly found in other dialects, for instance, most versions lacked string variables, lacked floating-point math, and allowed only single-letter variable names.
Tiny BASIC implementations are still used today, for programming microcontrollers such as the Arduino.
The earliest microcomputers, like the MITS Altair 8800, generally had no built-in input/output (I/O) beyond front-panel switches and LED lamps. Useful work generally required the addition of an I/O expansion card and the use of some form of terminal. At the time, video-based terminals were very expensive, costing much more than the computer, so many users turned to mechanical devices like the Teletype Model 33. The Model 33, like most teleprinters of the era, included a tape punch system intended to allow operators to pre-record their messages and then play them at "high speed", faster than most individuals could type the message live. For the early microcomputers, this provided a convenient computer data storage format, allowing the users to write programs to paper tape and distribute them to other users.
The Homebrew Computer Club met for the first time in March 1975, and its members soon used the meetings to swap software on punched tape. At the June meeting, a tape containing a pre-release version of Altair BASIC disappeared. The tape was given to Steve Dompier, who passed it on to Dan Sokol, who had access to a high-speed tape punch. At the next meeting, 50 copies of Altair BASIC on paper tape appeared in a cardboard box. When Ed Roberts, founder of MITS, learned of this, he stated "Anyone who is using a stolen copy of MITS BASIC should identify himself for what he is, a thief." Bill Gates made this more formal, writing "An Open Letter to Hobbyists", complaining that "As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software."
The complaint was not well received. Among the many responses, Bob Albrecht, another Homebrew member and founder of the People's Computer Company (PCC), felt the best response would be to produce their own BASIC that was completely free to use by anyone. He approached Dennis Allison, a member of the Computer Science faculty at Stanford University, to write a specification for a version of BASIC that would fit in 2 to 3 kilobytes of memory. To aid porting, the design was based on an intermediate language (IL), an interpreter for the interpreter, which meant only a small portion of the total code had to be ported.
Allison's initial design was published in the September 1975 edition of the PCC newsletter, along with an Intel 8080 version of the IL interpreter. The article called on programmers to implement the design on their computer and send the resulting assembly language version back to the PCC. They stated their plans to publish three special newsletters containing these user-submitted versions, along with bug fixes, programs written in the new BASIC, and suggestions and enhancements. The concept gained further notice when it was republished in the January 1976 edition of the ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages. Submissions poured in. Among the notable early versions was Tiny BASIC Extended by Dick Whipple and John Arnold which ran in 3K of RAM, added FOR...NXT loops, and allowed a single numeric array. They avoided the use of the IL and wrote it directly in machine code, using octal.