Roku Developer Program

[RokuJoel]

The Brightscript language compiler and bytecode interpreter was developed by Anthony Wood himself with further developments by our engineering team. The fairly recent 2D API (roScreen and related componenets) was also developed initially by Anthony Wood (I think he did this while on vacation), and further developed by our engineering team.

- Joel

[gonzotek]

"wzwor" wrote:
I didn't ask the question about the bar (though I have a pool table in my home). I just happened to be reading about Anthony Wood, Replay, and Roku. I saw your post about the two companies using brightscript and figured you might know the genesis of the language. Some say it resembles BASIC and people use the VB IDE to code in brightscript. I was guessing it was something Wood brought from Replay, but cannot document that.

You might find this post interesting:
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=45594#p311549

"EnTerr" wrote:

"aisaacs" wrote:
I am just curious... Why create a brand new language? It would seem that choosing an existing language (JavaScript, LUA, python, whatever) would be a much more practical choice, both in terms of ease of development and for quickly building a knowledgeable developer community.

When i researched Roku history to satisfy my curiosity, I found that Roku's founder and CEO Anthony Wood (also founder of ReplayTV) is an old-time fan of BASIC language, for historical reasons like Tandy TRS-80 computer from 1980s. See http://awsoftware.org/ and http://www.hotud.org/component/content/ ... zzle/24073

BrightScript is not a new language, it is BASIC inoculated with object-oriented features. But the main syntax constructs are oh-so BASIC.

My first programming experience was with a Color TRS-80 and Logo :). Good times!

[wzwor]

"gonzotek" wrote:
My first programming experience was with a Color TRS-80 and Logo :). Good times!

We had a Trash80 in my elementary school. I can't remember which teacher had it, but the closest thing to computer science was watching over his shoulder.

The first 'computer' I tickled was an HP calculator. We programmed it with paper cards -- FMT FMT...

My first computer was an Atari 400. Once I bought all the ROM carts from my local Zayres Department Store, I had to invest in a 410 program recorder (cassette player) and a BASIC cart so I could load cool games like Energy Czar and War of the Worlds off cassette. It came with a BASIC programming reference and tutorial, so that was my first programming. I no longer have the 400 or the 800xl that replaced it, but I do have the 130xe that replaced the 800xl and a Lattice C compiler.