Here is an article that the BASIC programming language is officially Quinquagenarian (50 years old) as of the 1st of May. Some of us remember the (good?) old days and this is an article that gives a glimpse of what gave us some of the spark which made many of us lean towards computer programming. Enjoy the trip down memory lane.
Nice read, but I just disagree with the last statement…
“But I can’t imagine my childhood without it, and it’s a bit sad to me that there isn’t a modern day equivalent of an easy-to-learn programming language for everyone.”
There is an easy-to-learn modern equivalent… better known as Xojo 
I can… because I did live my childhood without it… while BASIC was “born” in 1964… it was not commonly available until near 10 years later… at which time my childhood was complete 
[I was 8 when BASIC was born]
In 1964 I was learning IBM ACL (Auto Coder Language); which was a step up from maching language.
That article brought back great memories of sitting at my Apple IIGS typing lines of code into Applesoft BASIC which came built into the system. “That’s all you get” was pretty much the reaction from my wife and others who I told about my adventures, but for some reason I couldn’t stop playing with this new toy. From Applesoft BASIC to QuickBASIC to FutureBASIC to REALBasic, RealStudio and now Xojo. What a trip!
These types of posts and my own experience makes me wonder about the median age of xojo users… are we mostly boomers from the early days of home computing?
In 1964 I was 10 years old (that makes me 60 now).
I started programming a programmable calculator with 64 steps. I managed to make a mortgage calculation engine on that which I used daily in my job as an insurance broker. This was about 1978 or thereabouts (I can’t remember the exact date).
From there I bought a TRS-80 and used TRS-DOS and Basic supplied by Tandy. I wrote my first commercial apps on that! The next language I found was Turbo Pascal (from Borland) and this was my introduction to compiled code. There was a 64k limit to the compiled app on DOS and working on a IBMPC with 1mb memory. I then purchased Borland Pascal with Objects back in the 90’s (I think) and this was when I was introduced to Object Oriented Programming. This took a while but the, I got it!
From there to Visual Basic. Then Borland introduced Delphi and I bought that as I missed Pascal. I went through Delphi 1 to Delphi 6. When I moved to the Mac I found RealBasic, RealStudio and now Xojo.
I love OOP and I love Xojo.
I read all the complaints and moans about Xojo but it serves me very well. I actually like the development environment in Xojo. I don’t seem to have any of the problems that other posters complain about and I do wonder, sometimes, if I am just lucky!
My 2c worth.
Thank you Xojo.
Karen, don’t know about median age, but I do know there’s quite a few of us boomers around.
sigh, Nobody mentions Borlands’ Turbo-Basic followed by Power-BASIC in the 80ies 