[kragen]

all the basics i used on processors that slow were surprisingly inefficient, even for an interpreted languages

i thought they had to be, running on processors with that little memory. though later on i learned about forth, which is surprisingly efficient for an interpreted language

a more likely explanation is that sophie wilson was just a better hacker than bill gates and paul allen

[iainmerrick]

Yeah, BBC BASIC is really good. Both the language design and the implementation.

I loved it at the time, and the more I think back on it the more impressed I am. Like it had a very decent suite of floating-point routines, which if I remember right were very performant. In a 32KB ROM!

[crq-yml]

Some of the improvement in BBC BASIC over Microsoft's BASIC is attributable to the larger ROM(the first Altair BASIC was just 4k), but it's also that the BBC Micro's 6502 and DRAM was clocked higher than contemporaries. It's just a faster, more refined 8-bit machine all around.

[forinti]

Basic was actually a 16KB ROM. MOS occupied another 16KB ROM.

[iainmerrick]

Dang, you're right, I was misremembering.