[Info-vax] BASIC (was Re: 64-bit)

[Craig A. Berry]

On 1/10/24 5:28 PM, Chris Townley wrote:
> On 10/01/2024 20:17, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2024 13:07:04 -0500, mjos_examine wrote:
>>
>>> ... I think BASIC did have a pretty good
>>> run in the 90's and early 2000's, particularly on the Windows desktop
>>> platform.
>>
>> It had a role on 1980s micros, I’ll grant you that. The ability to switch
>> on and start typing code made for quite a productive environment: type a
>> statement with a line number to add it to your in-memory program, or
>> without to execute the line immediately.
>>
>> Nowadays, Jupyter notebooks offer a more modern environment for such
>> incremental, even scratchpad-style programming. And Python is a more
>> modern language without the limitations of BASIC.
> 
> Have you ever used DEC/Compaq/HP basic?
> 
> It is unlike the early home computer Basic. In its day it was a modern 
> highly structured language - which was of course compiled.
> 
> I maintained and developed an ERP system consisting of well over a 
> million lines of code, which worked well to support our business
> 

It also has some pretty nice features for convenient access to indexed
RMS files. Today one might not choose RMS as the "database" or DEC BASIC
as the language for a new project. But there is some pretty good old
stuff using them that works quite well.  DEC BASIC is definitely not a
toy language.