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Thomas E. Kurtz has died

(computerhistory.org)
613 points 1986 | 3 comments | 14 Nov 24 22:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.779s | source
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EvanAnderson ◴[14 Nov 24 22:48 UTC] No.42142043[source]▶
Could we get a black bar for Dr. Kurtz, please?

The legacy of BASIC on our industry can hardly be understated. The language and its mission at Dartmouth was innovative.

BASIC had immeasurable secondary effects simply by being the first programming language so many new computer users were exposed to (particularly near the dawn of personal computers).

Edit: I got sucked into some nostalgia.

Here's the 1964 edition of the Dartmouth BASIC reference: http://web.archive.org/web/20120716185629/http://www.bitsave...

It's really charming, and I think it gives you a bit of the feel for the time.

(I also particularly like, on page 21, the statement "TYPING IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THINKING".)

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marsten ◴[15 Nov 24 03:04 UTC] No.42143621[source]▶
That manual is a great find! Dr. Kurtz was surely way ahead of his time in aiming to bring computing to the masses, well before the microcomputer revolution. BASIC was an easy onramp to programming that hooked a ton of people on computing, especially kids of the 70s/80s like me. He shaped the future as much as anyone.
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1. ghaff ◴[15 Nov 24 04:23 UTC] No.42143944[source]▶
The funny thing is that I went undergrad to some big name tech school in the late 70s and you barely had access to computers without a specific need or for specific coursework. (I took FORTRAN using punch cards and a mainframe.) At Dartmouth for grad school, access to computing resources was much more democratized, even though I was working in material science.
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2. pasc1878 ◴[15 Nov 24 13:40 UTC] No.42146820[source]▶
The reason for that is simple. money.

In my first year FORTRAN or cards as you say then the University department bought a mini and used BASIC.

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3. ghaff ◴[15 Nov 24 14:00 UTC] No.42146995[source]▶
About the next year the joint computer facility (i.e. non-EE/CS) got a VAX but I never had a particular reason to get an account.

Looking back, the EECS department was actually a pretty active center for computer-related research. But computers weren't widely-used elsewhere at the time.