[Info-vax] General Availability of 9.2 for x86-64

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 7/16/22 19:37, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 7/16/2022 10:02 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 7/16/22 09:52, Dave Froble wrote:
>>> On 7/16/2022 8:35 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>> On 7/16/22 01:00, Dave Froble wrote:
>>>>> On 7/15/2022 10:33 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>>>> A bigger question would be other than Dave how much of the VMS
>>>>>> application base still uses BASIC.   :-)
>>>>>
>>>>> A decent indicator of that is Clair Grant saying a while back that 
>>>>> there would
>>>>> always be a Basic compiler on VMS, or, something to that effect. 
>>>>> Perhaps he
>>>>> has a better feel for the user base?
>>>>
>>>> Probably true, but you have to admit that in a world where COBOL
>>>> (the first serious business programming language) is considered
>>>> dead and languages like Fortran, Pascal and even Ada don't even
>>>> rate a mention in a CS degree program it is pretty funny that a
>>>> children's programming language best known for things like the
>>>> TRS-80 and VIC-20 is still in use.
>>>
>>> "children's programming language best known for things like the
>>> TRS-80 and VIC-20"
>>>
>>> I'm not sure that you intended that to be derogatory, or just your 
>>> opinion, but the Basic Plus language produced by EG&H was not the 
>>> same as some Basic languages.  It had many good features, and, was 
>>> quite adequate for business programming, and other uses.  The name 
>>> may be shared, but the implementations were very different.  As DEC 
>>> Basic, and follow-ons, it has only gotten better.
>>
>> So did COBOL.  And what did that get it?
> 
> Cobol has evolved original -> 74 -> 85 -> OO additions, but
> I think it is still the same language.

Not once you start using the OO stuff.   :-)

> 
> The many flavors of Basic share the name and only a very short list
> of common  syntactical items (*) but are otherwise very different
> languages.
> 
>  From the very primitive Dartmouth Basic, GW-Basic etc. to
> pretty advanced VMS Basic, VB6, VBS etc. to full multi-paradigm
> VB.NET.

Don't forget Basci09.  Probably one of the better dialects.

> 
> Arne
> 
> *) What does all known Basic variants share syntax wise? Case
>     insensitive, goto, for next loop. Anything else?

case insensitive in reserved words, but I am not sure all of
them go beyond that.

bwBASIC: 10 ask = 10
bwBASIC: 20 ASK = 20
bwBASIC: 30 print ASK, ask
bwBASIC: 99 end
bwBASIC: run
  20           10
bwBASIC:


I think the same applies to Basic09 but I don't have a system
available at the moment to test it.

bill