This BestBASIC interpreter on OS X requires 38MB at launch.  Back in the day they put BASIC on less than 16kB of ROM.

We take all this storage space for granted, LOL, get off my lawn!

I first learned to program in BASIC back in the 1970s on my father's TRS-80 Model I personal computer, when I was about 10 years old and we lived in Wichita, Kansas.  I taught myself this programming language, budding polymath that I was.  It's amazing how much you could do with 4kB of RAM back in the 1970s!  You could play Chess in 4kB!  (The very ( Read more... )