App Engine and goals for BASIC-1965

I attended the Capital Cloud user group meeting tonight. The talk was on Google's App Engine, and it was a decent talk. But as usual, the best part of the meeting was talking with other folks. I chatted with a few and had the opportunity to explain cloud computing (at least my "take" on it) to some non-developers.

In other news, I have a specific goal for the BASIC-1965 interpreter. I've been working on this interpreter for several weeks now, on and off. (Mostly off.) My general goal is to implement an interpreter that will conform to the description in Kemeny and Kurtz's book "BASIC PROGRAMMING" from 1967. But better than a general goal, I thought of a specific goal. A specific goal is a good thing for me; it gives me a definite target.

My specific goal: write a program (in BASIC) that will print a Fahrenheit-to-Celcius conversion chart.

The goal may sound trivial, yet I find it appropriate. Such an exercise was common in the early BASIC texts, and it is within the capabilities of the (quite limited) language of BASIC-1965.

So now all I need is some time!