Chipmunk Basic

Chipmunk Basic is an interpreter for the BASIC Programming Language. It runs on multiple OS platforms, and is reasonably fast for a pure interpreter. Chipmunk Basic presents a traditional (vintage) terminal-command-line programming environment, and supports a simple, old-fashioned, and easy-to-learn dialect of the Basic Programming Language. (Line numbers are required when using the built-in command-line console, but are not required in Basic programs written using an external text editor.) The language also supports a few advanced extensions. Free for educational and personal use.

Articles

Happy Birthday, BASIC by John Biggs on TechCrunch
Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal By Harry McCraken in Time magazine
Why Johnny can’t code by David Brin

Downloads

Chipmunk Basic for macOS
Newer Release of Chipmunk Basic
Earlier release of Chipmunk Basic
Even older Chipmunk Basic for Mac OS X - (Version 1.367.2627, 2016Apr01)
This is release is for Mac OS X 10.9 thru 10.12.x . It was re-written to support Cocoa for OSX 10.9 and later, thus many Mac specific features from older Carbon and PowerPC versions will be missing or broken.
Very old version Chipmunk Basic v3.6.5b3 for Mac OS X 10.6 Intel and 10.5 PPC (Universal/Carbon/32bit-Intel/PowerPC)
Older version Chipmunk Basic 3.6.3(b7) for Mac OS 9 Classic
Really Old version 3.5.7 for 68000 Mac OS 7 (binhex Stuffit archive)
Chipmunk Basic for Raspberry Pi (32-bit Raspbian) - (version 3.6.8b116 beta, text terminal only, 2019-Aug-03)
Chipmunk Basic for Raspberry Pi (64-bit OS) - (version 3.6.8b307 beta, text terminal only, 2024-Feb-09)
Older Chipmunk Basic for Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) - (version 3.6.7b6 includes X11 support)
Chipmunk Basic for Linux/x86-64 - (version 3.6.7b5 beta)
Chipmunk Basic for MS Windows2000/XP - (version 3.6.5b6)

Disclaimer: These versions of Chipmunk Basic are distributed in the hope that they might be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND; not even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS for ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. (There will be bugs!)

Documentation

The Old Fashioned Chipmunk Basic Reference Manual (or a pdf)
Quick Reference for the Mac OS specific commands
Old (1996) notes on some experimental Object Oriented extensions
Some nicely HTML formatted
General Documentation for Chipmunk Basic ,
contributed by Jim DeVona.
Wikibooks Chipmunk Basic help
A Tutorial on programming in Chipmunk Basic:
Tutorial: Chapter 1 , Chapter 2 , Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 ;
contributed by Thomas L. Ferrell.
Thank you for all the contributions of documentation. People have inquired as to how they can donate to the continued development of Chipmunk Basic; so I've added this PayPal contribution link:

The Basic Programming Language

General Information

BASIC (an acronym for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code") is the name of a family of related high-level programming languages, developed circa 1963 at Dartmouth College, to provide an accessible and easy-to-learn environment for non-science students to understand and use computers. In the early 1980's, the Basic programming language was built-in to the vast majority of all personal computers sold.

Lots more Information on Basic Programming - including:
- History of the Basic Programming Language
- Basic Programming Language Stardards
- Source code for some old Basic programs
- Source code for many Basic interpreters and compilers
- A list of some Basic programming environments
Wikipedia page on the Basic Programming Language
Wikipedia page on the Tiny-Basic, including many links to source code.

Ron Nicholson

HotPaw Basic for iPhone & iPad.
My Obsolete PalmOS/PalmPilot Info web site
FFT and DSP code for Chipmunk Basic
Digital Signal Processing algorithms and musings
Email Ron Nicholson