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One language to rule them all?

Back in the day, and we are talking almost 50 years ago now, there was just one computer language you would find on every desktop computer.

Yes, it was BASIC, that simple interpreted language that was very quick to learn but impossible to master.

Thanks to BASIC, even the most newbie home computer user could knock up a few lines of code that did astonishing things, such as printing "Hello World" on the screen.

Despite its simplicity, lack of structure, slow execution and other problems, BASIC became the language of choice for many very popular programs and it was the mainstay of many games published in the once-popular computer magazines of the era.

To be fair though, most of the best of those games consisted of a huge number of DATA statements followed by an almost endless list of numbers separated by commas. Get one number wrong and the program would crash or lock up the entire system when you typed RUN.

BASIC was an interpreted language which was surprisingly portable, unless you were using system-specific things such as PEEK or POKE to insert machine-code or access system-level data. This meant you could buy a book of "BASIC computer games" and most would run unaltered on virtually any personal computer of the day.

BASIC also allowed people who would consider themselves to be non-programmers to use their computers for tasks that required special applications. Many scientists, engineers and hobbyists wrote simple (or complex) BASIC programs to solve specific problems.

Without a language such as BASIC, the home computer would likely never have achieved the level of popularity it quickly did.

Now however, it's 2025 and things have changed a lot.

Whereas virtually every microcomputer sold back in the late 1970s or early 1980s came with some form of BASIC (usually Microsoft's flavour) in ROM, these days computers come with nothing in the way of a language designed to allow programs to be written.

Windows supports some rudimentary scripting through its command-line shell but if you want to write a program that balances your cheque book (oh, what's that? We don't have cheques these days?) or do something similar then you'll have to actually go hunting for a way to do this.

So what language would a budding programmer or an engineer or a scientist turn to today if they wanted to knock up a simple utility or even something a little more sophisticated?

The chances are that these days, the language of choice would be Python.

Just like BASIC, Python is an interpreted language which is relatively light on resources, portable and easy to learn.

However, unlike BASIC, Python is highly structured and far more readable which makes for more reliable and maintainable code.

The ADSB alarm I've written which uses a Raspberry Pi and a software-defined radio to produce a map of nearby aircraft in the skies above our heads is coded in Python and I chose the language for a number of reasons.

It's easy to learn and to use, it's memory-safe, it's highly structured, it has fantastic libraries for dealing with the trickier system-level elements and because this is an open source project, it's easier for others to modify and expand on.

The fact that it's free, not requiring any purchase or licensing payments is also a huge bonus.

So when was Python created and what's its history? Well until I watched the video below, I had no idea. In fact I was surprised to discover just how old Python actually is. This video is a fantastic window into the language and its development over several decades and well worth a watch. Most interesting to note is the fact that it is very much "one man's passion" rather than the work of a committee or large corporation. I think that explains why it is so good and brings so many good things to the party without being over-featured.

Enjoy:

Python is almost like "the good old days" when everyone was knocking out code to do whatever they needed with their computers.

Carpe Diem folks!

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