Microsoft’s original source code

The source code is such a fun read (for the comments). I found some source code for GW-BASIC, and here are two of my favorites:

  ;WE COULD NOT FIT THE NUMBER INTO THE BUFFER DESPITE OUR VALIENT
  ;EFFORTS WE MUST POP ALL THE CHARACTERS BACK OFF THE STACK AND
  ;POP OFF THE BEGINNING BUFFER PRINT LOCATION AND INPUT A "%" SIGN THERE

  ;CONSTANTS FOR THE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR FOLLOW
  ;DO NOT CHANGE THESE WITHOUT CONSULTING KNUTH VOL 2
  ;CHAPTER 3 FIRST

Edit: GW-BASIC, not QBASIC (https://github.com/microsoft/GW-BASIC)

Fun fact, GW-BASIC was a descendant of the original Altair BASIC. The "Translation created 10-Feb-83" headers on each source file refer to tooling Microsoft had that automatically translated the 8080 assembly to 8086 (it shouldn't be taken as a build date since they were manually modified after that point). Besides GW-BASIC, source code for the 6502 and 6809 rewrites of Microsoft BASIC were available up to this point (see https://www.pagetable.com/?p=774 and https://github.com/davidlinsley/DragonBasic) but I believe this is the first public release of the original 8080 BASIC code.

Shouldn't it be "valiant" ?

Sure, but in those days spellcheckers were separate apps - the most popular at the time being CorrectStar from MicroPro.

They weren't integrated into programming-oriented editors, and it would have been unusual to run them against code.

I still haven't seen anyone using a spellchecker in code outside of IntelliJ

Some people use VSCode extensions

The best programmers I’ve known have all been deficient at spelling. I don’t know why it so uniformly appears among them.

Emacs has the ability to do spellcheck inline, both as a run through the buffer (old-school style) and as an as-you-type live feature. That said, I do most of my coding in JetBrains IDEs these days.

cSpell alone has 13 million installs

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=streetsi...

I recently found https://github.com/tekumara/typos-lsp that uses https://github.com/crate-ci/typos Plenty of GH stars so likely a solid user base. Works great in NeoVim with the built-in apellchecker.

Eclipse has had an integrated spell-checker, which I believe is on by default for most file types, for like approximately forever. Now maybe everybody turns it off, but I gotta imagine there are some people who like it and keep it on.

For Vim/Neovim users, there is one built in that is pretty good, and once you've added frequent custom words to the dictionary it is great. You can turn it on with `:set spell` or off with `:set nospell`. Add custom words by pressing `zg` on the target word:

I have this in my vimrc file so it's on by default for certain file types:

    " Turn on spellcheck for certain filetypes and word completion.                                                                                                                                                                               
    " words can be added to the dict by pressing 'zg' with cursor on word.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
    autocmd Filetype markdown setlocal spell                                                                                                                                                                                                      
    autocmd Filetype gitcommit setlocal spell                                                                                                                                                                                                     
    set complete+=kspell                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
    " Don't highlight in red an underscore (_) in markdown                                                                                                                                                                                        
    " https://vi.stackexchange.com/q/18471/17441                                                                                                                                                                                                  
    autocmd Filetype markdown syn match markdownIgnore "\v\w_\w"

Custom additions to the dictionary will go to a simple text file (one word per line) in `~/.vim/spell/en.utf-8.add` (depending on your settings) where it is easy to edit or backup.

A popular t-shirt illustrates this point:

https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/637761-i-write-code-progra...

Humans in general, even writers, are deficient at spelling. This is the reason we need spellcheckers.

I am far more confident at spelling any Esperanto word that I have never faced before than I am with many common word in French which is my native language.

We can do better than blaming people for falling in pitfalls of a system full of odd traps.

"apellchecker" is actually a great name for a spellchecker

Codespell works very well, in my experience. I run it from the command line and in CI.

https://github.com/codespell-project/codespell

Absolutely not true about the best programmers I know.

> custom additions

You can also add it directly when using it. Move the cursor to the word and (I forget the command...) can add it as a rare word, good word or bad word.

Of course you are; Esperanto is a manufactured language designed to a certain standard; French, like our unfortunate English, is naturally evolved and has all the variants and inconsistencies that implies.