#8BitWeek #Atari -- "Hello, World" #3: Atari PILOT
One of the things that kept me going on the computer, as a kid, was the feeling of having some purchase with the thing. The fact that I could make it do things, with just a little bit of effort, was enough to keep me fascinated all day long. Atari tried to capitalise on that in the early days, by aiming their computers at the education market. Both, because it was a good "hook" with parents and teachers, and because it was a guaranteed future customer base.
PILOT is an extremely simple programming language written in 1968 explicitly for teaching programming to children. The language consists of one-letter commands followed by a colon, one command per line, and with a very limited set of commands and operations. Variables are prefixed with $, and labels with a *.
Atari PILOT is unique in that it added a set of commands for graphics and sound using two-letter commands, GR and SO. The graphics system used turtle graphics, with the string following the GR command containing multiple sub-commands like DRAW and TURN. It worked in either immediate mode, or as lines in a program. So, you could get that "instant gratification" hit with the kids, by having them type in graphics or sound commands, and seeing the computer JUST DO IT immediately.
All that said, however, PILOT never really went anywhere. Especially given the fact that BASIC shipped with the early models, and it could be made to do pretty much the same things, with a very similar sort of effort -- and the added advantage, that it was the LINGUA FRANCA of just about every platform at the time.
Anyway, here are some screenshots from the student guide to the Atari port of PILOT. Also, a screenshot of today's "Hello World".
