Back to BASIC
David Crookes talks to François Lionet and Laurant Weill about their modern successor to the Amiga programming language AMOS
Are modern computers too difficult to program? François Lionet and Laurant Weill certainly think so. David Crookes speaks to them about their successor to the Amiga programming language AMOS.
Some may say that modern life is rubbish. Blur proclaimed such a sentiment in 1993 when it released its rather splendid second album, but you’d hope things have improved somewhat since Damon Albarn and his chums entered the studio to record it.
In many respects, they have. In terms of technology, we’ve come on in leaps and bounds over the past 28 years. Our computers and devices let us unleash our creativity like never before, they make us more productive and they serve us endless photos of cats courtesy of the World Wide Web. What’s not to like?
Yet Laurant Weill isn’t so sure that things have always improved for the better. “Something happened in the 1990s,” he told PC Pro. . “Computers became truly complex machines but they also became much more difficult to program. There was no good reason for this. No good reason at all.”
Weill is the co-founder of AOZ Studio, a fledgling French firm aiming to make coding easier on modern machines. He’s working with François Lionet, who once developed two dialects of the programming language BASIC for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, and the venture could potentially be revolutionary.
To understand why, it’s worth remembering how coding used to be for so many of us. On 8-bit computers, you’d boot up your computer, be confronted by a flashing prompt and either type a command to load software or spend time tinkering with BASIC.
“The computer market today wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for that prompt,” reflected Weill. “By typing and exploring BASIC, people realised a computer was a tool for creation and they started making their own apps and games.” A good number progressed to coding in other languages, thankful of the start
BASIC gave them.
But then something changed. In the 16-bit era, the prompt gave way to a graphical user interface. You’d interact with a computer by moving a mouse and clicking icons in the same way you do today. The command-line interface fell by the wayside. It took away the prompt that had encouraged so many to take those initial steps. In releasing STOS and AMOS, in 1988 and 1990 respectively, Lionet effectively bridged the gap by providing a creator that included an editor and interpreter. This was followed by a compiler, so the programs could be run as standalone apps, and a 3D modeller.
Such tools allowed users to code in the same way to which many had become accustomed on 8-bit computers – and produce impressive results. AMOS become particularly iconic, leading to the creation of many apps and games, among them Jetstrike and Flight of the Amazon Queen.
“We provided users with a choice and we returned to them the concept of a flashing cursor,” said Lionet, who would enjoy seeing his tools sell more than 40,000 copies worldwide. Development continued until the release of AMOS Professional, which added 200 commands to an already impressive set of 500. But that was in 1993. Was Albarn correct after all: is this when things turned rubbish?
One to another
Lionet thinks so, which is why, a couple of years ago, he decided it was high time he returned to past glories. He announced an updated version of his language called AMOS2 with the intention of creating a backwardscompatible tool with AMOS that harnessed the power of JavaScript.
Believing Python and C# to be too complex for beginners, both to install and learn, and feeling Scratch concentrated too much on logic at the expense of actual coding, he looked to BASIC. And, after a phone call with Weill, development began to move quickly, with funding and a small team now assigned to the project. “For a long time, I’d wanted to give people the same chance I had when I was starting in the industry: to be able to easily program computers,” said
Weill, who shot to prominence as the founder of the once hugely successful French video game publisher Loriciel in the 1980s before going on to become a key figure in the interactive television industry.
“I was talking to François and listened to his proposal and told him that it had been my dream too for the past 25 years. His thoughts were mirroring mine because I could see he was working on a straightforward language that wouldn’t be a dead end for users. It would provide everything anyone needed to start creating something useful or fun.”
As the months have gone by, AMOS2 has evolved into AOZ Studio and it’s now on the verge of its first full release. Users have access to an editor and a set of tools that include automatic error reports and the ability to instantly run a program you’re working on to see how it’s shaping up. Object-orientation has been incorporated and it’s possible to define instructions and functions.
When writing an application or game in AOZ BASIC, a transpiler is used to convert the code into JavaScript and HTML5. The results can then be run on any system from PCs and Macs to Android and iOS smartphones and tablets.
In fact, they can be enjoyed in most web browsers and, as with AMOS, there will be many extensions available to coders, each adding more instructions to the language. “The dream is that AOZ will become a fabulous ecosystem with thousands of extensions,” Lionet said.
To that end, Lionet is convinced that AOZ’s ease of use will win it fans and encourage a new generation of coders. “Many IT professionals today started in the way I did, by finding
BASIC wasn’t so complicated and learning to code in their bedroom,” he said. “The language lets you discover its grammar at your own pace and be consistently rewarded, with results becoming ever more impressive on the screen.”
Roll with it
By way of example, Lionet rattles off a short program. Input "What is your name";NAME$ Print "Hello ";NAME$
“In those two lines you’re learning about inputs and understanding the notion of a variable,” he said. “When you run it, you’re interacting and grasping the concept of in and out, and that will cause people to go, ‘ah, so that’s how it works’. It means they’ll have learned by doing and they’ll be ready for the next stage. That’s why BASIC is powerful and AOZ will be so useful.”
Even so, AOZ Studio isn’t entirely alone in its endeavours. Other companies are also seeking to make coding accessible and fun. FUZE BASIC, for instance, has been around since 2013 and the company behind it even allows people to code on a Nintendo Switch handheld console.
Fantaisie Software has created PureBasic for the production of optimised native 32-bit or 64-bit executables. Indeed, ever since BASIC’s invention by John G Kemeny and
Thomas E Kurtz in 1964, the language has endured in many different guises. “It’s not a bad language, you know,” Weill said. “But we’ve made it better.”
Weill hopes AOZ Studio will become successful in the professional market, as well as among children and others who have always fancied programming but felt it was too complicated a task. Although most users will try their hand at making a game (just as they did in the days of STOS and AMOS), that doesn’t preclude it from being used in business. Cosmetic company L’Oréal has already developed training software and it says AOZ’s simplicity has enabled it to obtain fast results.
“L’Oréal has used AOZ for the initiation of new employees, teaching them about the company’s history, culture, products and mission,” said Weill. “Baptiste Bideaux, the lead developer, has developed five escape game rooms in 3D and five small games in 2D and they’ve been able to create the products with two fewer ewer developers than would be needed eeded if they worked in JavaScript. avaScript. Having L’Oréal use the he language has shown how professional applications running to more than 6,000 lines can be achieved and it’s allowed us to test and tune AOZ.”
A design for life
Weill says it’s faster to develop with AOZ Studio because the number of lines needed is far less when compared to languages such as Python, Java, C#. JavaScript and Unity. The program sizes are significantly smaller too, but you’re still
“You’re interacting and grasping the concept of in and out, and that will cause people to go, ‘ah, so that’s how it works’”
able to interface with modern Node.js and JavaScript libraries. The website gives an example of a straightforward program to display text and an image. JavaScript runs to 48 lines and 6.5MB. AOZ Studio does it in six lines and in just 7KB.
“We are going to launch some super-easy database instructions and a page layout designer,” explained Weill. “I also estimate that roughly for a game or an interactive app, AOZ divides by ten the number of lines needed and, for a pro app by five or six. That’s a lot.”
Lionet wants to go further and replace Adobe Flash too, particularly in the wake of Microsoft’s Windows 10 hammering the final nail into Flash’s coffin by removing it from all versions of the operating system. “Multimedia companies miss Flash and talk about it already as the good old days,” said Lionet. “Flash was a great kind of intermediate between Java and JavaScript and it was really cool. We’d love to become the new Flash in the heart of creators.”
For now, though, the focus in on getting the language past the beta phase. If you fancy checking it out, you can go to aoz.studio and download AOZ Studio for free for Windows, Linux and macOS. Be aware that advertising will appear in any programs you develop unless you fork out €89 for a two-year licence. That will strip away the ads and add support. Programs can be distributed without you having to pay royalties.
So how does it fare? Well, once it’s up and running, it’s simple to grasp. AOZ Studio uses a retooled version of the desktop text editor Atom for its integrated development environment (IDE) and any code can be instantly run in a browser window or as an app in its own window, allowing for testing on the fly and giving you immediate results.
Anyone who ever created software in AMOS will also be able to import their files into AOZ and have the sprites, sounds and images extracted and exported as PNG and WAV files. “We could see a revival of many good ideas from the Amiga days,” Weill said.
“Someone could take what they did in the past and build on it too.”
It’s an intriguing prospect and it could help to bring the past back to life in more ways than one, with Weill reckoning that it’s likely to lead to a boom in browser-based development.
“The innovation today lies online and in the browser because there’s not innovation in the systems we use,” Weill claimed.
“Windows hasn’t really changed, for instance: we’re using a 30-yearold design that happens to finally work now. And that’s why we chose to transpile in JavaScript right now. We will look to transpile into C# so we can be a real professional tool at some point too, but we’re only just getting started.”
“The innovation today lies online and in the browser because there’s not innovation in the systems we use”