Re: Larkin, Power BASIC cannot be THAT good:

On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:06:02 +1000, Bob Larter <bobbylarter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jasen Betts wrote:
On 2009-05-26, AZ Nomad <aznomad.3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 25 May 2009 23:28:59 -0700, JosephKK <quiettechblue@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2009 21:26:36 -0500, AZ Nomad
<aznomad.3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2009 19:11:42 -0700, John Larkin <jjSNIPlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There is a fundamental difference between goto and gosub. It is an
important one, subroutine invocation saves time and code space without
the biggest problems of goto.
But GOTO is faster than GOSUB.
You can make a very nice state machine with an ON..GOTO (or equivalent
CASE...GOTO) structure that dispatches to a number of snippets, each
of which does its thing ends with a GOTO back to the top of the state
dispatcher. Works like a trained pig.
Unless you're running a processor running in the single digit megahertz,
programmer development time, code reliability and maintainability are
far more important than raw speed. It hardly matters if a subroutine finishes
in 0.0015ms instead of 0.0012 ms when the process being monitored takes 5ms.

BASIC is a shitty language because no two implementations are compatible.
Everything with named variables, constructs, code blocks, parameter passing,
if/then/else, case statements, etc. required proprietary extensions.
You seem to be confusing typical uP interpreter mid-1980's (tinybasic
ala Gates) implementations with the actual original language as
defined by its originators.
Not at all. I'm comparing all the myrid basics over the years.

"True basic" was just another proprietary extension. It's silly name
didn't mean that anybody else would ever follow suit.

Even microsoft has released at least 4 versions incompatible with each other.

And that's not counting the GUI, or the non win/dos versions.

Hell, I grew up up with the MS 8KB ROM BASIC versions, & they're not
compatible with *anything*.

No two versions of BASIC, even from the same company are compatible.
At one point, microsoft even made visual basic incompatible with it's
last major release. BASIC is only good for throwaway code. Write it;
run it; toss it. Toss anything you learn too.
.

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