Built From a Memory
In 1982, a copy of Micro Sistemas magazine arrived with a handful of BASIC games printed inside, nothing sophisticated, the typical text-based programs that circulated among hobbyists at the time. But they were enough to plant something.
Shortly after, a book arrived as a gift, more magazine than book, called Computer Spacegames (The edition I read at the time was the one released in Brazil, translated into Portuguese). One of those games was Space Mines. The player managed a mining operation on a distant planet, running cycles where decisions about workers' pay, entertainment, and conditions directly affected production. Improve salaries and morale climbed; morale climbed and output rose; output rose and word spread, drawing more miners to the colony, which made the next cycle harder to balance. Inevitably, the tipping point came: costs outran revenue, workers left, and the whole operation unravelled. The narrative it created was surprisingly rich for a few dozen lines of BASIC. My brothers and I spent hours there.
Plan9Basic is, at its core, a sentimental rescue. A way of bringing back the language that was the first door into technology, not out of nostalgia for its limitations, but out of respect for the directness it represented.
This project is truly 100% nostalgia and passion. I'm not trying to change the world here, or create a new technology that will be crucial to any area or segment. The purpose here is to remember a time that was full of learning and fun for me and that shaped my professional career. And in doing so, why not have fun during the process?
The goal has always been the same: keep the floor as low as possible while raising the ceiling as high as it can go. More libraries, more platforms, richer tooling, but always with the same principle underneath: the complexity should live in what you build, not in getting started.
