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

[bill]

On 1/10/2024 6:54 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2024 23:28:29 +0000, 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?
> 
> I think so, yes. It very much tried to emulate the interactive BASIC-PLUS
> environment from RSTS/E, as I recall (right down to the “Ready” prompt).
> 
>> It is unlike the early home computer Basic. In its day it was a modern
>> highly structured language - which was of course compiled.
> 
> There is one BASIC that I have heard about, but never used, which sounded
> genuinely interesting, and that was GRASS (or ZGRASS, as the Z80 version
> was called). It had multithreading and no line numbers. Function bodies
> were held in string variables, and interpreted from there. And this was
> from 1978.
> 
> There are some documents about it at Bitsavers.

Well, as long as we're bringing up non-standard BASICs.  How about
BASIC09.

> 
>> I maintained and developed an ERP system consisting of well over a
>> million lines of code, which worked well to support our business
> 
> So you got it to work, back in the day. Nowadays, there are easier ways of
> achieving the same thing. For one thing, you would have many existing
> libraries to draw on, instead of having to write all that code yourself.

There were many complex systems written in Microsoft BASIC on things
like the TRS-80.  Word Processors, Spreadsheet Packages, Payroll. GL,
AP, AR. etc.

Nobody has ever said that you can't do stuff with BASIC.  Only that
better languages came along.

bill