Not So BASIC

The slow down at my remote support position continues. I am supposed to be helping bridge the "digital divide" by helping a program that provides internet service to low-income Americans. We are still unable to access a tool to help process and track the orders, so I am basically sitting and helping co-workers with their questions.

I took time today to research an owner's manual for the old Commodore-64 Computer. I have the crazy idea to use a Raspberry Pi to emulate the C-64 to complete a program to play music using a standard keyboard. As I read through the basics of BASIC, I was surprised at how many of the features of more powerful modern languages existed within a language that was designed to be simple to learn.

The statements we take for granted in C++. Python, etc were there; IF. . . THEN, FOR loops, etc. Commodore-64 BASIC was typed; integers, floats and strings were all able to be declared and some conversions were available. The PEEK and POKE commands acted as a primitive form of pointer. Arrays seemed like Python or other more modern languages lists.

One final thing I found in the manual was a list of programs, one of them looks like it is for a piano. I may have code I can use as a basis for what I want to do!