HP Calculator Highlights since the 1980

[rprosperi]

(04-02-2018 10:39 AM)pier4r Wrote:  I do not own a 71B, but as far as I read the 71B basic is even more readable than ti basic. Could be that with it HP could have dominated the calculator market in general.

The BASIC dialect in the 71B is easily the most friendly and flexible of any I've used; the only thing it really lacked was allowing long variable names, but this was not done to keep program memory usage down (remember those days?).

But, note that the BASIC in the 75 was quite different, based on the BASIC in Series-80, which shared the same CPU design. While there are many similarities, there is no question that 71B BASIC is more flexible, powerful and easier to use.

Sadly, AFAIK, there was no follow-on to the 71 BASIC in any other machine family. Some folks have commented that some of it's better features are common to Rocky Mountain BASIC which pre-dated the 71B (and also survived well after) though I've never used it so can't comment specifically. RMB came from HP in CO (hence the name) and 71 BASIC from Corvallis, so if there is any commonality, it's likely by inspiration rather than evolution.