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AmigabasicAmigaBASIC was a BASIC implementation for the Amiga, designed by Microsoft. (Some people say this was the only software Microsoft ever wrote for the Amiga.) AmigaBASIC attempted to provide an easy-to-use API for the Amiga's (at that time) unique graphics and sound capabilities, but did not succeed very well. The BASIC dialect AmigaBASIC uses has a lot in common with GW-BASIC on the PC, with the Amiga-specific commands and functions seeming like an afterthought. AmigaBASIC's interface to the Amiga's capabilities is limited, for example using the HAM graphics mode is impossible. Furthermore, the language uses, and provides access to, only a very limited part of the operating system functions. To achieve any real interaction with the OS, you had to use obscure DECLARE FUNCTION LIBRARY statements. All this made AmigaBASIC look like a primitive sandbox environment sitting on top of the OS rather than a programming language that the OS supported. Lastly, the language was even shipped unfinished. The most prominent sign of this is the mandatory use of the STATIC modifier in subprograms. The meaning of this modifier is a promise to the interpreter that the subprogram will not alter the contents of variables passed into it. This was originally supposed to be an optimisation feature, but Microsoft never had time to implement the more complex version of subprograms, and thus instead chose the easy way of making the modifier mandatory.
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