PROGRAMMING
The Great Adventure of Creativity and Logic
by Dave Moorman
We
are entering into a
strange world of symbolic logic. Process Logic, to be exact. If you
do those logic problems found in puzzle magazines, you know Classic
Logic. If you found Geometry enjoyable in high school, you know Proof
Logic. And if you studied philosophic logic
in college, you are acquainted with Symbolic Logic.
Process Logic is a combination of Proof Logic and Symbolic Logic -- plus three wonderful additional features. Like Proof Logic, you will be arranging statements and commands in a particular order -- not to prove some truth, but to affect some action in the computer. In the process, you will use Symbolic Logic to manipulate values.
The three additional features are symbolic value holders (called variables and arrays), loops, and conditional commands. It is the ability to make conditional changes in the flow of logic that gives a computer its ability to 'think."
The C64 includes a built-in BASIC interpreter. Computers are controlled with three types of language. At its very heart, the computer processor recognizes certain values as "instructions." This is built into the machine itself, and is called Machine Language. EVERYTHING the computer does is done by means of ML...
The above is a small excerpt from the first installment of a complete guide to BASIC 2.0 programming. BASIC 2.0 is the version of the BASIC programming language found on the Commodore 64 and VIC-20. New chapters will be published in future LOADSTAR issues.
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