BBCSDL mentioned (amongst others) on Next Without For podcast

Soruk

Hi,

Just a little heads-up that BBC BASIC for SDL is mentioned (amongst a number of others) on the Next Without For podcast - http://www.nextwithoutfor.org/2023/08/show-011-using-basic-on-modern-hardware.html

I have yet to listen, having only just received the heads-up myself!

Richard_Russell

Soruk wrote: »

I have yet to listen, having only just received the heads-up myself!

Thanks for the heads-up, but I'm not planning to listen to 78 minutes of podcast on the off-chance that it mentions BBCSDL somewhere! If you do (or somebody else does), and there's something of interest, perhaps you could post the start time.

I did notice on the page to which you linked that, whilst they are aware of the iOS edition of BBCSDL, there's no mention of the Android edition. That's a shame given that the main 'selling point' of BBCSDL is the range of platforms supported.

Richard_Russell

By pure chance, just randomly dipping in, I found the Matrix Brandy section at around 1:05:00.

Soruk

BBC BASIC is mentioned for iDevices at 29:08 in a very positive light. It's also mentioned for MacOS at 44:06, again very positively, and again in passing at 48:17. Surprised it didn't get mentioned at all when they looked at Windows BASICs (though to be fair, when it was mentioned they did say it ran on just about anything!)

So a complete run-down this was not, however it was an interesting look at the various BASICs available for modern systems.

Richard_Russell

Soruk wrote: »

BBC BASIC is mentioned for iDevices at 29:08 in a very positive light. It's also mentioned for MacOS at 44:06, again very positively, and again in passing at 48:17.

Thanks. The absence of an earlier mention of the Android edition is explained at that last clip, although not why it isn't linked from the web page.

Something that struck me was a tacit linking of being 'paid for' with being a 'serious programming tool'. I wonder to what extent people may not consider BBC BASIC to be a 'serious' language because it is free. It's certainly true that a few people still buy BBC BASIC for Windows despite it being inferior to BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 in almost every way.

I can't disagree with the comment about the practicality of entering a BASIC program from scratch on a phone, but the point they miss is that one can write and test the program on a desktop platform and then run it on the phone. Indeed in the case of Android (but not iOS) you can mount it as an external USB drive and edit the program on the phone that way.

I suppose I could leave a comment at the web page but I'm never sure if that is wise.

BigEd

(Thanks for the pointer, Michael - I'm very slowly playing the podcast. It's not my preferred form, but I'm interested to see what's said.)