From Zero to READY: Recreating C64 BASIC in Visual Studio Code

Impressive,

Although the small 4 line program showed a problem (TAB missing), the debugging of larger basic programs will show more. No doubt.

But it is impressive that it is possible at all. With sufficient focus and money (payed AI licenses ?) you might get C64 basic in few days. So a 13y old whizzkid with time to spare could create MMBasic (Geoff and Peters work, and many others, that took 14 years 2011-2025) in a week or so.

Terrifying....

Volhout

  Quote  

So a 13y old whizzkid with time to spare could create MMBasic (Geoff and Peters work, and many others, that took 14 years 2011-2025) in a week or so.

No: not without understanding exactly what he was trying to achieve and the environment in which he was trying to achieve it. As I said in the previous thread, the role of the programmer is dead but the roles of systems analyst, systems architect and designer are now the crucial areas and needed skills
Edited 2025-12-17 02:34 by matherp

  matherp said  

... As I said in the previous thread, the role of the programmer is dead but the roles of systems analyst, systems architect and designer are now the crucial areas and needed skills

I fully agree

while i am not a fan of the 'AI revolution', the results in Dave Plummer's video are really impressive. although, i do wonder if the AI started out with a synthesis from various source code for BASIC interpreters out on the net?

here is a question for Peter and/or Geoff: if you took the source code for the Micromite MKII MMBasic (ie, MX170) and presented it to one of these AI's with instructions to optomize the source code such that the compiled binary was (a) no less efficient wrt to speed, (b) minimized wrt the generated binary size, what would the result be?

the reason i suggest the MX170 version is that it is feature-complete and well-tested, while already constrained wrt binary size. if the AI could squeeze 10k or so of extra flash space out of it, then there may be some possibility to, for instance, add in onboard SD card support. or double precision FP maths.


cheers,
rob   :-)
Edited 2025-12-17 07:08 by robert.rozee

Rob, I think that's too hard - currently.

The code could be squashed a bit (now, by hand) but would (I feel) be less and less readable/maintainable.  Getting 10K? My feeling is no chance.

John

  Quote  

but would (I feel) be less and less readable/maintainable.

Almost certainly less human readable/maintainable, but once you go down the AI path is that necessary?
If needed AI can be used to explain how the resulting code works and do the maintenance when required.

Edit.
It would be a bit like Crunching a MMBasic program.
You would still have the source code and can re-do the whole process if there are serious problems.

AI can also be used to create a suite of test programs to ensure no new bugs are introduced.
Edited 2025-12-17 08:02 by phil99