Thoreau BASIC
Languages and libraries
basic interpreter
SHOW HN2026
How HN took it
8 positive, 7 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 4 critical, out of 19 comments about the project. Thread score +0.24.
Idea: 6 for, 4 againstDocs: 1 for, 0 againstExecution: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Impressive bare-metal UEFI boot approach
From 2 comments
Very cool! The raw-metal boot part is impressive. BASIC requires more support than you'd expect. Here's an interpreter, with a similarly long list of features it has to support:…
JoeAltmaier on HNGreat, nice project! In the time of Electron bloat, it's really refreshing to see bare-metal UEFI stuff.
ale42 on HN
Nostalgic appeal of a boot-to-BASIC environment
From 2 comments
This is great! Allowing anyone to program like it is the 1980s and bring them back to their hardware somewhat. I think it will also find it's way to the permacomputing crowd…
trashb on HNI really like this! I started a personal project a long time ago to boot a Raspberry PI into an environment like this, the idea being to bring back the good old days of the ZX…
polaris64 on HN
Objections
Not open source, which limits use and modification
From 2 comments
Not FOSS? That's a real pity. I learned to program on 8 bit micros, and created a rough boot-to-BASIC experiment ~15 years ago following the JeOS pattern. So this project sounds…
roryirvine on HNI agree, it's a shame it's not FOSS. Besides UEFI, it has a Windows GDI port, but if it were FOSS one could add SDL backend for example and then one could compile it for Linux…
skrellm on HN
Kids find BASIC unappealing compared with modern computers
From 1 comment
As a parent who had a very similar experience growing up, I've tried putting BASIC in front of my young kids. It didn't work at all; the magic just isn't there anymore. If you've…
StilesCrisis on HN
Requests
Open source release
From 2 comments
Not FOSS? That's a real pity. I learned to program on 8 bit micros, and created a rough boot-to-BASIC experiment ~15 years ago following the JeOS pattern. So this project sounds…
roryirvine on HNI agree, it's a shame it's not FOSS. Besides UEFI, it has a Windows GDI port, but if it were FOSS one could add SDL backend for example and then one could compile it for Linux…
skrellm on HN
Chainloading other operating systems as a bootloader
From 1 comment
I learned to program on the Commodore 64 and in QBASIC in th 90's. I'll give it a try. Considering how much it supports, if it could chainload a full operating system, it would…
dlcarrier on HN
Questions
Which hardware has it been run on and how reliable is UEFI across machines
From 1 comment
What hardware have you run the UEFI version on? Can you assume that pretty much any computer these days provides UEFI firmware that supports ThoreauBASIC, or might some computers…
jonjacky on HN
Does file system support extend beyond FAT32 such as NTFS
From 2 comments
If you have a PC mainboard whose UEFI supports NTFS, does that filesystem work too?
fuzzfactor on HN> If you have a PC mainboard whose UEFI supports NTFS, does that filesystem work too? Yes. The UEFI Simple Filesystem Protocol is transparent to the UEFI app. The protocol gives…
skrellm on HN
How was it built as an EFI application
From 1 comment
Very nice! I am curious how you built your BASIC as an EFI application. I didn't find any source code or build instructions in the downloads. I am investigating whether it would…
jonjacky on HN
Alternatives named
Other BASIC interpreters such as moondew BASIC
From 1 comment
Very cool! The raw-metal boot part is impressive. BASIC requires more support than you'd expect. Here's an interpreter, with a similarly long list of features it has to support:…
JoeAltmaier on HN
Other bootloaders such as GRUB, rEFIt, syslinux and easyboot
From 3 comments
I learned to program on the Commodore 64 and in QBASIC in th 90's. I'll give it a try. Considering how much it supports, if it could chainload a full operating system, it would…
dlcarrier on HNWhat's wrong with those bootloaders? Maybe try syslinux?
edoceo on HN> it would make a great replacement for GRUB or rEFIt. Try https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/easyboot
skrellm on HN
Open Firmware Forth
From 2 comments
I know at least old Apple systems had a full Forth interpreter in their bootloader.
dragonfax on HNOpenFirmware, developed by Sun, used by Sun, Apple, IBM and ARM, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware)
Someone on HN