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And the BBC Micro was also completely unnecessary; there were plenty of companies making microcomputers that the kids (i.e. me, at the time) could use.
All they did with the BBC Micro was spend taxpayers' money to take profit away from companies like Sinclair and Amstrad, give all the resultant money away to celebs and in bonuses for BBC execs, then drop the whole thing.
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Mark_Wallace wrote: there were plenty of companies making microcomputers that the kids (i.e. me, at the time) could use
Not when the Beeb was being created, there weren't. And each computer was different, so adding programming about all the different computers coming onto the market (and at the time the Beeb was being produced, they were all crap)_ would have been too hard - having a 'standard' machine to talk about was important because the Beeb could then talk about that machine in particular - because they could never have made a show about computing on (e.g.) the Amstrad or Spectrum because their coverage would have to be balanced (and, again, they didn't exist at teh time the Beeb was being produced)
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What on Earth are you talking about?
Have you been Googling wikipedia pages, again?
The Spectrum ZX80 was discontinued before the BBC Micro was even released! And the ZX81 was released almost a year before the BBC, AIRI (I got my ZX81 in July, for my birthday, a few months after it had been released, and the BBC wasn't available until the following Christmas).
The technology wasn't waiting for the BBC to come along and be the hero!
They were not needed; all they did was take money from everyone but Acorn (which it vastly underpaid), and give large amounts of it to people who had nothing to do with computing.
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Ah! The famous spectrum zx80!
Sinclair and acorn both tendered for making the BBC.
The spectrum would have been the BBC but it was a sh*t toy, not an expandable computer
I am trolling o. The sh*t toy front - just taste of your own medicine stuff
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_Maxxx_ wrote: Sinclair and acorn both tendered for making the BBC.
Yes, and Acorn lost... their business because they won the contract.
I like to think that Clive Sinclair -- a genuine man of genius and vision -- saw the people he would have to work with for what they were, and just let it go. I recall reading news stories to that effect, back in the day, so this opinion may not be wrong.
It was absolutely a bad idea, because what motivates employees of the BBC is absolutely not what is needed by the computer industry.
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Mark_Wallace wrote: Acorn lost
So, while a subsidiary of Acorn - ARM - dominate the mobile processor market, Sinclair erm, what exactly are Sinclair doing now?
Mark_Wallace wrote: genuine man of genius and vision
Yes the tricycle was inspired - see how many there are on the roads, now! still, the folding bike is a real seller.
Mark_Wallace wrote: saw the people he would have to work with for what they were, and just let it go
What happened behind closed doors is not possible to say, and what has been said since is not verifiable; at the time, Sinclair was furious and petitioned the BBC to change their minds - not something you wold expect him to do if he had "just let it go"
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_Maxxx_ wrote: a subsidiary of Acorn - ARM - dominate the mobile processor market
Er, it's Qualcomm who are dominating the mobile processor market, still, but the Atom, the Tegra, etc, are looking to break that domination.
Acorn's ARM? More or less dead for a couple of years, now. Hell, they couldn't even take the ARM octacore, so Samsung had to do it, instead.
You've really gotta stop using wikipedia as a source.
But as to what Sinclair is doing now: whatever the Hell Clive Sinclair wants to do. That's what great men do -- as opposed to boring, one-track-minded, business-men.
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Mark_Wallace wrote: it's Qualcomm who are dominating the mobile processor market
is that the Qualcomm licensed from ARM you are talking about, or some other innovative company I haven't heard of?
Mark_Wallace wrote: More or less dead for a couple of years, now. Hell, they couldn't even take the ARM octacore, so Samsung had to do it, instead.
If I may quote from your scorn]-laden Wikipaedia
Quote: Unlike most traditional microprocessor suppliers, such as Intel, Freescale (the former semiconductor division of Motorola) and Renesas (a former joint venture between Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric),[48] ARM only creates and licenses its technology as intellectual property (IP), rather than manufacturing and selling its own physical CPUs, GPUs, SoCs or microcontrollers.
so we're talking a design company that doesn't manufacture. And the discussion was not about that, but about their success or otherwise. You seem to think that if someone doesn't actually build a thing they're not successful!
http://www.pcworld.com/article/228969/article.html[^]
Obviously not successful if they only aim for 50% of the market!
Mark_Wallace wrote: You've really gotta stop using wikipedia as a source.
Well, a publicly edited source is, I feel, better than the sources you've put forward which are, wait while I look back on the conversation - oh! your "feelings" Hmmm. Let me think about that for a nanosecond.
Mark_Wallace wrote: But as to what Sinclair is doing now: whatever the Hell Clive Sinclair wants to do. That's what great men do -- as opposed to boring, one-track-minded, business-men.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
OMG Seriously. Go sober up & I will speak to you when you have gotten over your hangover!
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_Maxxx_ wrote: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Yes, fools often look at geniuses and laugh. That doesn't make them less the fool.
Bored with this, now. Really bored.
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Hmm.
It will certainly be interesting to see what money they make out of it in the long run.
Give 1,000,000 away this year - I wonder if the schools will buy their own next year? And will there be software to support it, games, add-one etc.
So perhaps it will be of financial benefit to the license payers in the long run?
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If history is any indicator, they will carry on with it for as long as it can give air time to a few celebs and kudos to a few producers, and drop it as soon as the celebs and producers say they're not getting enough adoration out of it.
Education? That doesn't enter into it.
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You evidently weren't around for the BBC Micro, then
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Er, yes I was. I went with the Speccy, first, then moved on to the Amstrad PCP, and then I got a Speccy 128 really cheap.
The BBC Micro was the least popular of the available machines, partly because its BASIC was a bit too lame.
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Well, the speccy in total sold about 3-4 times as many units as the BBC (although that is worldwide sales, you pretty much had to be in the UK to get a Beeb) so it was certainly more popular - but I don't think spectacularly so - especially as it was far cheaper.
But I cannot comprehend you saying it was because its BASIC was "a bit to lame"!
Compared to what? Spectrum BASIC?
I rather feel the difference in sales could have had more to do with the sales difference - 125 vs 335 - than anything else!
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Hey, how long have you been a CP member?
You ought to know by now that if someone says "language A is naff" it's more productive to bang your head against a wall than debate the point!
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When someone says "X" is crap where "X" is manufacturer language or whatever, I treat it with the contempt it generally deserves.
but when someone says "Y happened because X is crap", with the supporting evidence being 'cuz I said so' I fart in their general direction.
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Yeah, but BBC BASIC was cr@p!
You can probably download all the BASICs of the time, and make your own comparisons.
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I have programmed pretty much all of them - at one time had a collection of all the old ones.
Its a personal opinion thing, usually weighted by the user's personal exposure, as to whether one or another is better than another.
And BBC basic was clean and well designed - especially for education, Sinclair idiosyncratic and commodore pretty straight forward.
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_Maxxx_ wrote: BC basic was clean and well designed - especially for education dull and useless, Sinclair idiosyncratic strangely inspired and strangely inspiring (addictively so), and commodore pretty straight forward damned solid, in your face, and got the job (any job!) done.
I agree.
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I'm genuinely interested in what makes you say BBC Basic was "Dull and useless". in what way? compared to Sinclair's - what specifically do you see that made it dull ? And useless? in what way, again?
IMHO the great thing about BBC Basic was it added structure (it had named functions and procedures) and it 'compiled' into byte code as each line was entered (making it very efficient) and allowed you to write assembler code in the source directly.
Sinclair BASIC OTOH was a bare implementation of 'standard' Basic - it's innovation being that instead of typing in "FOR" one pressed a function key and single keyboard key; that alone should warn educators to steer clear, ,as you at once are teaching a specific tool, rather than a paradigm. And limiting variable names to one character! how advanced!
And Commodore was pretty much Microsoft Basic (an was the first BASIC I learned) - and how I suffered for the 2-character variable name limitation.
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You and your wikipedia searches! It's getting silly!
BBC Basic's PROCDEF was based on MS & GW BASICs' SUB! It wasn't added until after QuickBasic had been released, and certainly wasn't available on BBC Micros (maybe on the Acorn Archimedes, which was years later)!
Sinclair BASIC was, as you rightly say, years ahead of everyone else in the use of shortcut keys which you could choose to use, if you wanted to.
Other IDEs didn't have such a comprehensive set of shortcut keys until years later.
Etc.
Etc.
Look, if you actually know what to say in response to anything said in this thread, please add it to the discussion -- but stop just googling piecemeal, in the hope of finding arguments.
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Similar here - I started with a VIC20 then a C64. The BBC B was years behind (technologically) in comparison.
Then my school got a BBC Archimedes; laughable compared with the Amiga I had at the time 
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Nice course you steered, there.
The VIC20 (I still pronounce that "VIC Venti", because I was in Italy when it was released), the C64, and the Amiga were each big elements in the history of the microcomputer (which a lot of kids don't know is what we used to call the PC).
The BBC Micro? I'm surprised anyone even bothers to remember it.
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It was a sad day when I had to admit defeat and move to a PC 
I still toy with the idea of getting hold of a second hand Amiga or C64 from eBay..
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Brent Jenkins wrote: I still toy with the idea of getting hold of a second hand Amiga or C64 from eBay..
I bought a fully working Amstrad PPC 640 (the first portable computer a company ever issued me with), full of the joys of nostalgia -- but you forget how much work you had to do just to use the damned things!
It was a joy to set it aside and get back to pointing and clicking.
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