BBCBasic 4+
BBC BASIC Programming Language
Richard Russell
-
- Free
Screenshots
Description
BBC BASIC is the programming language originally specified and adopted by the British Broadcasting Corporation for its groundbreaking Computer Literacy Project of the early 1980s. This is an advanced, cross-platform, implementation with many enhancements over early versions. As well as extensions to the language it supports anti-aliased 2D graphics, 3D graphics, shader programming and includes a 2D physics engine. Its multimedia capabilities include stereo music, sound effects and video. It supports networking and the accelerometer. Nevertheless it maintains a high degree of compatibility with the BBC Microcomputer, including SOUND, ENVELOPE and MODE 7.
What’s New
Version 1.39a
Updated SDL2 to version 2.30.0 and SDL2_ttf to version 2.22.0
Extended VDU 19 to set colours with an alpha (opacity) value
Increased initial memory allocation to 32 Mbytes
Added keywords.bbc and smithchart.bbc example programs
Ratings and Reviews
The majority of commands work perfectly
Generally this app is amazing. The only issue is ensuring you disable smart punctuation in the keyboard system setting on your iPad if the " character is playing up.
The best by far, but some idiosyncrasies
This is the most powerful implementation of Basic on iOS by miles. It's also completely free, with no ads; it doesn't harvest your data; and it doesn't even take up too much space on your device. You probably won't become a Silicon Valley billionaire writing BBC Basic, but there's no better way to (a) learn programming and (b) write useful programs of your own to do jobs you can't find an app for. There's lots of documentation online to help you get started with the BBC Basic language.
A few minor points to be aware of:
(1) The app itself takes a bit of getting used to. It isn't that the user interface is bad, but it's quite different from most other iOS apps.
(2) This is an implementation of the BBC Basic language, not a BBC Micro emulator. Old 1980s programs written in pure Basic will almost certainly run, although you might need to make some minor changes (e.g. a few COLOUR statements to get the palette looking the same) and they'll be much faster; but anything that relies on the particular processor or particular memory addresses definitely won't. Don't expect to be able to run commercial BBC Micro software!
(3) Other modern structured Basics are mostly derived from Microsoft's QBasic, but this one isn't. Straightforward differences of syntax won't cause anyone much trouble—it's easy to put ENDPROC instead of END SUB. But there are more subtle differences (parameters in BBC Basic are passed by value unless you specifically ask for pass by reference, local variables have dynamic scope instead of lexical scope, etc.) that won't always stop your programs running but can sometimes cause awkward bugs. So if you're used to a Microsoft-style Basic you should read up on how BBC Basic does things. (You don't need to worry about these issues at all if you're new to programming!)
Needs a few UI tweaks, and a mod to CR <-> LF mod.
Takes a few seconds to work out how to create a NEW BASIC file, but does what it says. Main niggle is the lack of any feature / means to convert Carriage Returns to Line Feeds and vice versa, to permit code blocks to be pasted in from the Web, Apple's Note app, a text editor, ... . Limiting any copy-n-pastes to a single line.
Developer Response ,
I can't reproduce this. I can copy-and-paste a code block from the Pages app or a web page into BBC BASIC, and line-breaks are preserved.
App Privacy
The developer, Richard Russell, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
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Information
- Provider
- Richard Russell
- Size
- 52.1 MB
- Category
- Developer Tools
- Compatibility
-
- iPhone
- Requires iOS 12.0 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 12.0 or later.
- iPod touch
- Requires iOS 12.0 or later.
- Apple Vision
- Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- Languages
-
English
- Age Rating
- 4+
- Copyright
- © Copyright R. T. Russell 2024
- Price
- Free