Guru
Joined: 17/05/2016
Location: United StatesPosts: 3879
| Posted: 02:00pm 25 Jul 2026 |
Well, I have been amazed with what Peter has done with MMBasic and a succession of hardware targets, and I have followed him in his journey from PICAXE since shortly after he left that site.
I programmed in my professional career with SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), Fortran, Cobol, IBM Assembler, C, and VBA with various database packages. As a hobby, with C, 8080/Z80/68000 assembly, PHP, Lua, javascript, PICAXE Basic, MMBasic, and Annex Basic.
Since the beginning of this year I've found that Gemini and Claude code can code interactively in MMBasic (with me in the middle) and then talking directly to RP2350 hardware, and now talking directly to the Pico Computer 3 to program in micropython. It's fantastic, and it prioritized my analyst/designer skills rather than my programming skills. Note that I could not write "Hello, World" in python without looking at the manual.
I expect to continue to do my sensor work about the house with MMBasic on Pico 2 Ws. Claude code may write the program, but I'll understand it. I can also figure out what is happening in a python programming, but it's like understanding a foreign language without being able to speak it. I don't expect to become a python programmer--but will guide AI python programmers.
All I can say is, What a journey.