Thoreau BASIC

About Thoreau BASIC

A free 64-bit BASIC for Windows x64 and bare-metal x64 UEFI.

In the maker’s words

Thoreau BASIC started as a joke. I wanted a BASIC where I could type something ridiculous like: DIM A%(12000000000) …and have it actually work. Then I kept adding things. The result is Thoreau BASIC, a free x64 BASIC interpreter inspired by GW-BASIC, running both as a normal Windows program and directly on bare-metal UEFI without an operating system. Version 3.2 has become considerably more ambitious than the little interpreter I originally intended to write. The language still deliberately looks and feels like old Microsoft BASIC. Line numbers, GOTO, GOSUB, PRINT, PSET, LINE, CIRCLE, DRAW, etc. are all there. But underneath that rather innocent-looking surface is now quite a lot of machinery. Some of the current features: native x64 JIT compilation, with automatic fallback to the interpreter PARFOR for multithreaded numeric loops SSE2 / AVX2 acceleration where available 64-bit addressin…

Where people found it

• Hacker NewsShow HN: Thoreau BASIC – What if BASIC hadn't gone out of fashion?67 points38 comments1 day ago