Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s when you turned on a PC, more often than not, you’d get a Basic prompt. Most people would then load a game from a tape, but if you were inclined to program you could just start writing. [Richpl] wanted that same experience and thus PyBasic was born. Along with some other Github contributors, the system has grown quite a bit and would be a good start at porting classic games or creating a replica vintage computer.
The interpreter lacks specialized hardware-specific features such as sound and graphics, of course, but then again, you could add them. It does have file I/O and also includes some interesting features like an analog of C’s ternary operator.
There are line numbers and if you are looking for a way to contribute, the program is lacking a renumber feature. There are a few oddities around handling numerics. For example, you can assign a string to a number (which could be a feature) and there’s an extra space in negative number output. Leading zeros are not optional for numbers less than one. You can use colons to put more than one statement on a line, but not if they are part of a loop. So there are lots of ways you could contribute if you were so inclined.
We hear that [Richpl] is working on an Oregon Trail port and already has a text adventure, Star Trek, and Eliza working. If you decide to play with this, you really need this book. We still like computers that boot to Basic.
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