Re: Larkin, Power BASIC cannot be THAT good:
- From: John Larkin <jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:06:54 -0700
On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:37:57 -0500, AZ Nomad
<aznomad.3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:09:05 -0500, Tim Williams <tmoranwms@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"AZ Nomad" <aznomad.3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:slrnh3obm0.v4e.aznomad.3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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.
So what's your obsession over throwaway code, anyway? The whole premise of
"portable code" is silly to begin with. Yes, C _can_ be written to compile
Sure. Why have standards at all? I really like having to do everything
from scratch, not having the ability to leverage anybody else's previous work.
Oh, the joy of learning a new language every time I write some code.
What better use of my time than having the task of rewriting code to use a
new version of a compiler because the compiler writers were too lazy to care
about any compatibility with other vendors or even with other versions of their
owh compilers. Rewriting page after page of previous code to use a new langage
is fun!
What I really want is to be permentantly locked into using one vendors
particular version. If I have 40,000 lines of QA automation to perform
regression testing on a software syhstem, I really want to be locked into
using a particular compiler version forever. I don't want to be able to use
improved libraries because I want to be locked into some ten year old langauge
system.
What OS are you working in, that will be invariant for the next 10
years? Is all your i/o plain ascii streams?
If you have 40K lines of code to test other code, you must be a
programmer. So why you are telling engineers how to design
electronics, posting to s.e.d., is a bit obscure. Some people use
Excel, some use Mathematica, some use Basic, some do Laplace math on
grid paper with pencils. Portability is not an issue if a tool solves
an engineering problem and the tool will remain available for as long
as needed.
If I stick to PowerBasic for engineering apps I don't need to rewrite
much. Moving a program from Qbasic to PBCC isn't hard, and I can still
run 12 year old Qbasic or compiled PDS Basic programs, and still do.
What do you do about a 12-year old Pascal program? Or a 30 year old
Fortran program? Do you think that C will be the language of choice 20
years from now? And that all the APIs will be the same? I sure hope
not.
Basic is older than C and will probably survive it.
John
.
- References:
- Re: Larkin, Power BASIC cannot be THAT good:
- From: Jasen Betts
- Re: Larkin, Power BASIC cannot be THAT good:
- From: Bob Larter
- Re: Larkin, Power BASIC cannot be THAT good:
- From: AZ Nomad
- Re: Larkin, Power BASIC cannot be THAT good:
- From: Tim Williams
- Re: Larkin, Power BASIC cannot be THAT good:
- From: AZ Nomad
- Re: Larkin, Power BASIC cannot be THAT good:
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