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

[Dave Froble]

On 1/11/2024 2:42 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <unpa1b$3316l$2 at dont-email.me>,
> Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> On 1/10/2024 9:28 PM, bill wrote:
>>> On 1/10/2024 7:02 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> The world has evolved.
>>>
>>> Exactly.  BASIC also evolved, but better languages have passed it by.
>>
>> I confess to curiosity.  In what ways has other languages passed by Basic?
>
> Usually the answer to this is going to be some combination of
> better abstraction facilities, better safety properties, more
> capable and ergonomic libraries, etc.

Which then asks the question, are such really better?  Perhaps some of that is 
more opinion than fact.

Below, when I write Basic, I'm referring to DEC/Compaq/HP/VSI Basic.

> VSI BASIC appears to have a few useful things like static type
> definitions, functions, etc, and it frees the programmer from
> _having_ to specify e.g. line numbers.  But it doesn't seem to
> have a lot of support for other abstraction facilities like
> modules, classes, or anything of that nature.

What amuses me about that is that when people talk about "classes", I don't have 
a clue what they are talking about.  Perhaps I do, if the case is new names for 
old concepts.  That is something I didn't like about Microsoft, they seemed to 
like re-naming concepts.

> String handling
> seems anemic.

Can't let that one go.  Basic in my opinion does strings very well.

> There doesn't seem to be support for generalized
> memory pointers,

Correct, Basic does not have any pointer data types.  It does have a function to 
retrieve the value of a pointer.

> let along non-nullable references, so your
> ability to create rich linked data structures seems limited.

Not sure what that means ...

>  I
> don't see any support for higher-order functions,

Not sure what that means ...

> lambdas,

Not sure what that means ...

> or
> closures;

Not sure what that means ...

> no currying of functions.

Not sure what that means ...

>  Statement modifiers seem
> kind of neat, but I bet they can be easily misused.

Statement modifiers are very useful, and in some ways make code easier to 
understand.

> All in all, it doesn't look like a terrible language (it's not
> COBOL); it looks like an early-1980s-era language.  But nothing
> about it jumps out at me as being spectacularly amazing, either.

It''s not amazing, it just works.

> I suppose I would turn the question around and ask what's about
> BASIC makes it more suitable than other languages for particular
> types of programs?

For me personally, I really like the syntax of the language.  When I have to 
attempt to read C code I'm easily confused.  Many other languages seem to copy 
the syntax of C.


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David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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