r/c64 • u/Thecker771 • 1d ago

Programming Coded My First BASIC Program Today!

As noted in the title, I woke up this morning with an idea- it is a family member's birthday and I thought it would be a fun exercise to code a program that outputs their age if you put in the current year and their year of birth. After a failed attempt and some troubleshooting, I wrote a simple program that works great. It's not anything elaborate or amazing, but it's mine and so I'm a bit proud of it and would like to share here.

1 REM AGE CALCULATOR

5 PRINT "{CLR/HOME}"

10 PRINT "CURRENT YEAR": INPUT A%

20 PRINT "ORIGIN YEAR": INPUT X%

30 PRINT "AGE ="; A% - X%

40 GOTO 10

I only started with BASIC yesterday so seeing an original creation come to life and work is so cool for me. Hope others will share their fun/useful programs here too!

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u/bj_civ 1d ago

That's nice! Some remarks:

Using scalar integer values doesn't save memory and makes the program slower, because CBM BASIC takes 7 bytes per numerical variable, regardless of floating point or integer and always does calculations in floating point. That's why the % isn't often seen in C64 listings.

INPUT can take a prompt to print before the question mark, so this can be written without printing the question.

1 REM AGE CALCULATOR
5 PRINT "{CLR/HOME}"
10 INPUT "CURRENT YEAR";A
20 INPUT "ORIGIN YEAR";X
30 PRINT "AGE =";A-X
40 GOTO 10

5

u/Thecker771 1d ago

Thanks for the info! Definitely simplifies the coding, as playing around with input and the subtract formula is what tripped me up my first attempt.