That’s a UK-centric perspective. The rest of Europe did not, by and large, use Spectrums or BBC Micros; they all mostly used Commodore 64s. (I am not an American.)
AFAIK, Americans mostly used Apple ][, not Commodore, which also had the Microsoft BASIC without named functions, IIUC.
The rest of Europe [...] mostly used Commodore 64s.
I don't think that's true.
I was a teenager in the 1980s; I had one (1) friend with a C64. The only other person at university with their own computer was, like mine, a ZX Spectrum.
The Spectrum 128 was designed in Spain by Investronica in Spain, and first sold in Spain:
Of course in Comminist times, there were many Spectrum clones in East Europe; this article lists about 60 or 70 different makes (not models, but brands, many with multiple models):
There existed a huge number of home computer models, and they all had a tiny portion of the market, and many countries had their own little brand. But what most people used, especially in the mid-1980s, was predominantly Commodore 64s, from what I remember. In the late 1980s and early 1990s it was Amigas and Atari ST’s for a while, and then IBM-compatible PCs took over.
But even if I remember that incorrectly, how large a part of users had a computer with a sensible version of BASIC? I submit that it was vanishingly small; possibly only the UK had any large user base of computers with a reasonable version of BASIC. For most other people, BASIC did not have functions. And therefore, following the lowest common denominator, neither did program listings in magazines, etc.
I disagree, but it seems that mere evidence isn't going to sway you, so I doubt anything will.
Basically every home computer had a better BASIC than the C64, including GW-BASIC, and most people I knew personally didn't use C64s. It was built as a games machine and nothing else, with a poor BASIC, poor, slow, low-capacity and very expensive floppy disk drives. And the machine was expensive too in the early days.
Maybe your family and your friends' families were rich. Mine weren't. We couldn't afford £500 American toys. We had sub-£200 machines, with better BASICs, and we loved the things. Kids of rich British families had BBC Micros and looked down on us.
Comments
That’s a UK-centric perspective. The rest of Europe did not, by and large, use Spectrums or BBC Micros; they all mostly used Commodore 64s. (I am not an American.)
AFAIK, Americans mostly used Apple ][, not Commodore, which also had the Microsoft BASIC without named functions, IIUC.
I don't think that's true.
I was a teenager in the 1980s; I had one (1) friend with a C64. The only other person at university with their own computer was, like mine, a ZX Spectrum.
The Spectrum 128 was designed in Spain by Investronica in Spain, and first sold in Spain:
https://medium.com/@uto_dev/the-awakening-of-the-spectrum-12...
In Portugal, they also had their own version of the Spectrum, derived from the American Timex-Sinclair 2068:
https://timex.comboios.info/tc2068.html
Poland had a version too, the Unipolbrit:
http://oldcomputer.info/8bit/unipolbrit/index.htm
Of course in Comminist times, there were many Spectrum clones in East Europe; this article lists about 60 or 70 different makes (not models, but brands, many with multiple models):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones
In France there were lots of unique machines, the Thomson, Hector, Victor and others:
https://hackaday.com/tag/french-computers/
https://www.abandonware-france.org/ltf_abandon/ltf_infos_fic...
Tangerine's Oric, Atmos and Stratos line were also big, especially in France I believe:
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/526/Oric-1-48k/
https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=79
https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=226
There was even a Welsh machine, the Dragon series, as well as Camputers Lynx, Memotech, Tatung Einstein, Elan Enterprise, and many more.
In the 1980s there was a huge and bewildering variety of home computers in Europe, many but by no means all British.
And pretty much not a single one ran MS BASIC, because it wasn't very good. They all had their own.
I haven't even touched on the Japanese market which was just as diverse.
There existed a huge number of home computer models, and they all had a tiny portion of the market, and many countries had their own little brand. But what most people used, especially in the mid-1980s, was predominantly Commodore 64s, from what I remember. In the late 1980s and early 1990s it was Amigas and Atari ST’s for a while, and then IBM-compatible PCs took over.
But even if I remember that incorrectly, how large a part of users had a computer with a sensible version of BASIC? I submit that it was vanishingly small; possibly only the UK had any large user base of computers with a reasonable version of BASIC. For most other people, BASIC did not have functions. And therefore, following the lowest common denominator, neither did program listings in magazines, etc.
I disagree, but it seems that mere evidence isn't going to sway you, so I doubt anything will.
Basically every home computer had a better BASIC than the C64, including GW-BASIC, and most people I knew personally didn't use C64s. It was built as a games machine and nothing else, with a poor BASIC, poor, slow, low-capacity and very expensive floppy disk drives. And the machine was expensive too in the early days.
Maybe your family and your friends' families were rich. Mine weren't. We couldn't afford £500 American toys. We had sub-£200 machines, with better BASICs, and we loved the things. Kids of rich British families had BBC Micros and looked down on us.