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

[Dan Cross]

In article <l0bi9hFgf55U1 at mid.individual.net>,
bill  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>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.
>> 
>> 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.  String handling
>> seems anemic.  There doesn't seem to be support for generalized
>> memory pointers, let along non-nullable references, so your
>> ability to create rich linked data structures seems limited.  I
>> don't see any support for higher-order functions, lambdas, or
>> closures; no currying of functions.  Statement modifiers seem
>> kind of neat, but I bet they can be easily misused.
>> 
>> All in all, it doesn't look like a terrible language (it's not
>> COBOL); 
>
>Dave has his fixation on BASIC.  One of mine is COBOL.
>When using it to do the kind of work is was designed and intended for
>just what do you think is wrong with COBOL?

Nothing per se, I just wanted to give you a rise. :-)
(Sorry; couldn't resist.)

	- Dan C.