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THE STORY OF BYWATER BASIC
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The story of bywater basic is the best story about the origin of a language
interpreter, and the most charming and tragic story that I have every
accidentally stumbled across while reading a man page.
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DISCOVERY
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Method of discovery:
1. "Let's see what languages I can code in on tilde.town"
2.
http://tilde.town/wiki/programming-languages.html
3. *bwbasic*
>"BASIC (an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is
>a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design
>philosophy emphasizes ease of use." (Wikipedia)
4. nostalgia. gorillas.bas.
5. `man bwbasic`
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At the bottom of the man page is this gem.
8. THE STORY OF BYWATER BASIC
This program was originally begun in 1982 by my grandmother, Mrs.
Verda Spell of Beaumont, TX. She was writing the program using
an ANSI C compiler on an Osborne I CP/M computer and although my
grandfather (Lockwood Spell) had bought an IBM PC with 256k of
RAM my grandmother would not use it, paraphrasing George Herbert
to the effect that "He who cannot in 64k program, cannot in 512k."
She had used Microsoft BASIC and although she had nothing against
it she said repeatedly that she didn't understand why Digital
Research didn't "sue the socks off of Microsoft" for version 1.0
of MSDOS and so I reckon that she hoped to undercut Microsoft's
entire market and eventually build a new software empire on
the North End of Beaumont. Her programming efforts were cut
tragically short when she was thrown from a Beaumont to Port
Arthur commuter train in the summer of 1986. I found the source
code to bwBASIC on a single-density Osborne diskette in her knitting
bag and eventually managed to have it all copied over to a PC
diskette. I have revised it slightly prior to this release. You
should know, though, that I myself am an historian, not a programmer.
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Taking a closer look at the story and why it is awesome.
1. The Spells.
This is the story of Mrs. Verda Spell and Mr. Lockwood Spell, who
are obviously wizards. "Verda Spell" means "Green Spell" so she is
obviously a druid or some kind of nature magic user. Lockwood is a
warlock obviously. Sersiously, coolest names ever.
2. Geography:
* Beaumont, Texas is a reasonbly sized town in southeast Texas,
east of Houston, near Louisianna, presumably hence the French
name. It is the county seat of Jefferson County and part of the
Beaumont-Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. Which I
mention in order to establish that this was a reasonably large town,
a seat of local government, a rail town and a port city. Mrs. Verda
Spell probably wasn't a "city person" but she also didn't exactly
live in a backwoods, backwater town.
* Port Arthur "is host to the largest oil refinery in the United
States" and is only about 20 miles from Beaumont. A 30 minute drive.
A 6.5 - 7 hour walk. I can't find much information about the commuter
train that ran between the two towns. edit: but desvox has been
there and confirms that it does exist!
3. Poetry
George Herbert was a Christian poet. The quote referenced in the
story, I think, might be a reference to the following:
> He that cannot forgive others, breaks the
> bridge over which he himself must pass if he
> would ever reach heaven; for everyone has need
> to be forgiven.
But that's not quite parallel to "He who cannot in noun verb,
cannot in noun", but I'm not familiar with Herbert and am not sure
what the author might be referencing here.
4. Retrocomputing
Verda Spell was a retro programmer even in 1982! She was writing a
BASIC compiler in C on an old CP/M machine after Lockwood bought
her a newer, beefier IBM.
I can imagine him grumbling, "bought her that new danged computer
and she won't use the blasted thing" and her rebutting, "I didn't
ASK for a new computer. I like my old just fine, thank you very
much!"
Verda sounded like a scrappy person, wondering why Digital didn't
"sue the socks off" Microsoft.
5. Tragedy
Verda was "thrown from a commuter train" and killed.
This means that she was either
- forcefully ejected and literally thrown from the train by a
separate party, meaning she was murdered, or
- she was thrown from the train as one is thrown from a car
during an automobile collision. Either there was an accident
on the rail, or the fell from the train due to some mishap
6. Discovering lost artifacts
The fact that the author found the compiler in an old knitting
basket, managed to copy it over to a usable format, and completed
the project, is very appealing. The odds are probably pretty good
that he might have never found it, that nobody would have, and it
would be lost.
