[Info-vax] BASIC compiler in the hobbyist distribution

[IanD]

On Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 5:54:14 AM UTC+10, John Reagan wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 at 8:37:37 AM UTC-4, seasoned_geek wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Ah, so it is not the incredibly useful and fun to play with BASIC interpreter environment by a different name....<sigh>
> > 
> 
> Want an interpreter?  Install Python and play with that.

+1 ;-)

On Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 6:32:59 AM UTC+10, seasoned_geek wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 at 2:54:14 PM UTC-5, John Reagan wrote:
> > On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 at 8:37:37 AM UTC-4, seasoned_geek wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > Ah, so it is not the incredibly useful and fun to play with BASIC interpreter environment by a different name....<sigh>
> > > 
> > 
> > Want an interpreter?  Install Python and play with that.
> 
> No thanks, I want a real language.

What, no love for Python? ;-(

What's wrong with Python as a language?

Is it because it's interpreted? Too slow perhaps?  If the later, there's always Julia (once we get unix -> VMS porting more streamlined, then Julia may appear on VMS sometime?)

Is it because it's not really constructed for web browser integration? None of the current VMS languages even come remotely to fitting that bill

It is because it doesn't subscribe to the code block camp? It's been debated endlessly in Python camps that code blocks versus code indentation doesn't actually make code more 'robust', at least not according to the Python purists (of which I am not)
The argument from the Python camp, and I think it's a completely valid one, is that if you functions are spreading over more than a page, then it's perhaps time to look at breaking those functions down further - or so their argument goes. I even heard a hardened C programmer concede to this point!

As an interpreted language I think it's great for what most folk use it for, as a glue language to be flexible interface between various disparate applications and/or systems

As a language to build enterprise wide applications, then yes, it's not the best hammer to hit that problem with but who writes these things now days? It's the likes of Oracle and the big end of town that has sown up that domain

It's a very productive language in that with a small amount of code you can perform a lot of work and have a lot of functionality and be easily understandable for maintenance when compared to the likes or Perl which allows you as a language to be terse to the point of painfulness, Pythons design steers you away from this

I'd love to see DCL eventually replaced with Python, but I'm sure there would be some folk who would burn me at the stake for such a comment. DCL's beauty is it's ease of understanding / readability but it is too crippled as a 'real language' IMO to take VMS forward on it's future journey and Python fits the bill as a possible replacement partly because of it's ease of reading, enormous libraries and the fact that it has a lot of love beyond VMS (i.e makes it slightly easier to get people outside of VMS interested or at least looking)

While not wanting this thread to go downhill into a language war, I'm curious as to exactly how Python doesn't fit your model of a 'real language' and what you would consider as a 'real language' and why

On Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 6:59:07 AM UTC+10, Hans Vlems wrote:
> An algol60 compiler?

Lol