If you are of a certain age, your first exposure to computer programming was probably BASIC. For a few years, there were few cheaper ways to program in BASIC than the Sinclair ZX series of computers. If you long for those days, you might find the 1980-something variant of BASIC a little limiting. Or you could use SpecBasic from [Paul Dunn].
SpecBasic is apparently reasonably compatible with the Spectrum, but lets you use your better hardware. For example, instead of a 256×192 8-color screen, SpecBas accommodates larger screens and up to 256 colors. However, that does lead to certain incompatibilities that you can read about in the project’s README file.
The README also has instructions for configuring the system to use larger fonts which may help readability on large monitors. There’s also a file full of demos you’ll probably want to look at.
While learning 1980-era BASIC today isn’t much of a career move, we do think that learning simple programming concepts in a simple uncluttered environment that is very interactive isn’t a bad thing. After all, it worked for an entire generation of developers.
If you prefer your BASIC coding on the Web, that’s possible. Or, maybe you just want something more modern.
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