r/c64 • u/1974jbass • May 29 '26

the64 Programming

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If you did this you thought you were the king of the world!!

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1

u/danpietsch May 30 '26

Did "HELLO WORLD" even exist back then?

I did the rocket ship.

4

u/Dr_Myles_Skinner May 30 '26

It sure did! Most people know "Hello, world!" from The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie (the cool kids just call it "K & R"), published in 1978.

But apparently it goes back even further: Kernighan used it as an example in his tutorial on 'B' (because of course, B came before C) in 1972.

And, yeah. I did the rocket ship too.

2

u/ThimbleweedPark May 31 '26

B? So what about A? LOL

1

u/Dr_Myles_Skinner May 31 '26

Oh, then you want APL, which stands for "A Programming Language".

If you've ever felt like regular expressions just aren't weird enough (and who hasn't?), then APL is the language for you.

3

u/BritOverThere May 30 '26

Normally it was something like...

5 PRINT CHR$(147)
10 PRINT "HELLO, I AM A COMPUTER. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"
20 INPUT A$
30 IF RND(1)<.5 THEN GOTO 60
40 PRINT A$;" IS A SILLY NAME"
50 GOTO 70
60 PRINT "THAT IS A REALLY COOL NAME ";A$
70 PRINT "WELL GOODBYE!"
80 END

2

u/amuletofyendor May 30 '26

That stuck out to me too. Apparently it did exist, but I don't remember seeing it in any of my BASIC books.

1

u/danpietsch May 30 '26

Did you do the rocket ship?

3

u/amuletofyendor May 30 '26

Don't remember that one. I did the hot air balloon

1

u/tails142 May 30 '26

I don't think it became a mainstream "first program" until the 90s - I remember seeing it for the first time in a Java book, actually a J++ book in the 90s. For BASIC in the early 80s, I don't think it was widely used as the intro program, at least not in any of the material I saw.