Last month I put a bit of effort into fixing BINSIC – the collection of Groovy scripts that allows the execution of Sinclair ZX80/81 BASIC programs – and I have been thinking about the thing that they offer that modern computers don’t: the ability to switch on and just write a simple program to solve a problem.
The obvious thing to do would be a browser plug-in that replicates the straight-to-coding environment: particularly for Chromebooks and the like.
BASIC lacks expressive power but it is simple to use and would be a good choice, though I guess the line numbers abstraction would have to go.
cartesian product ... stuff about computing mostly 