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Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

28 points by Eridanus2 3 hours ago | 8 comments

davidfekke 49 minutes ago

Here is the 6502 assembly source code for Microsoft Basic:

https://github.com/microsoft/BASIC-M6502

joebig 13 minutes ago

And all of it within ~4 Kbytes too!

ChrisArchitect 8 minutes ago

Associated blog post from 2025:

Celebrate 50 years of Microsoft with the company's original Source code

https://www.gatesnotes.com/microsoft-original-source-code

(Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43575884)

thrownawaysz 2 hours ago

"FILE WILL BE DELETED AFTER PRINTING"

hah I've never seen that before but reminds me to roguelike games.

"permadeath coding" would be actually fun. IF compiler error THEN erase code repository or something like this

WillAdams 36 minutes ago

Or, just buy the source for a dollar and bury it:

https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html

bitwize 12 minutes ago

The source code (and original assets) to many video games from as late as the 90s has been lost. The publishing company often deleted it after the game shipped, thinking it just took up space. This is one reason why, for example, there hasn't been a substantive remaster of Final Fantasy VII.

Also, it sounds like you described Vigil: https://github.com/munificent/vigil

piker 2 hours ago

These two guys* were crazy productive in the 2 months they worked. Just the level of commenting shows how much thought they were able to give it during that span.

* plus the math package guy

jll29 26 minutes ago

Does the code work?

I.e., has anyone OCR'd the listing and fed it into an emulator yet?