This assembly language source code represents one of the most historically significant pieces of software from the early personal computer era. It is the complete source code for Microsoft BASIC Version 1.1 for the 6502 microprocessor, originally developed and copyrighted by Microsoft in 1976-1978.
↫ Microsoft BASIC Version 1.1 GitHub page
An amazing historical artifact to have, and I’m glad we now have the source code available for posterity. I hope Microsoft gets on with it, though, as I think it’s high-time we get official open source releases of things like Windows 3.x, 95, earlier Office releases, and so on.
First MS-DOS and now BASIC.
Now please do: Windows 3.1, GW-BASIC and MASM and our childhood would be complete.
Okay, who am I kidding? We also need Turbo C++ and Borland Pascal.
GW-BASIC is already open-sourced:
https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC
@sukru Rejoice! GW-BASIC was open sourced back in 2020:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/
https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC
But I would’t hold my breath for Windows 3.1, though…
Antartica_,
Ah yes! Turns out my memory has failed me, thanks for bringing this up.
I still hope for Windows though. It really is an important piece of computing history. But you might be right, it might take a while…
You can play with https://robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/ (GwBasic) or https://qb64.com/ – https://www.freebasic.net/ (QuickBasic)
Kochise,
Nice! Thanks for sharing.
As a small detail, it is kind of fun to see an old timestamp in the initial commit. Having the full history documented using the git commits would be a nice “artificial history” of the repository. The original authors should be used, of course.
They need to be careful about open sourcing “earlier Office”. It was better.
Iapx432,
Haha. +1
I agree with you.
In the 2000s office made the transition from having some of my favorite apps to being distinctly worse.
There was planned obsolescence in play so many people were pressured into upgrading but I think it was majority of customers who disliked the changes.