[geeks] Go Apple....

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Mon, Jul 29, 2002 at 12:10:24PM -0400, dave at cca.org wrote:
> jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu writes:
> 
> >A lot of BASIC programmers don't have the concepts either.  It is
> >possible to be a real programmer in BASIC, I think, but not all BASIC
> >programmers are real programmers.
> 
> I think of Basic as having the disadvantages of assembler without
> the advantages, and with a thick coat of glossy paint thrown
> over it.

It seems to me that that is too broad of a statement to make without
qualifying exactly what is basic?  I'd be hard pressed to say that VB
has the disadvantages of ASM.  Even to say that QuickBASIC has the
disadvantages of ASM seems a bit of a stretch.

AlphaBASIC certainly has some pretty awefull ASM like disadvantages
though.  It was all to easy to slice a string wrong and thus bring
down the entire machine.
 
> >I have seen some very masterful displays of programming done in
> >AlphaBASIC (a derivitive of business basic, that runs on the Alpha
> >Micro mini computer), a language that is amazingly bad (arguably worse
> >that VB in my opinion).
> 
> And Business Basic traces its lineage back to the MAI Basic Four
> minicomputers of the 70s. Imagine an AS/400 that made you work in
> basic rather than RPG.

Well, I've never used an AS/400 or RPG, so I can't comment on that
comparison.  But I can tell you I'm not thrilled with AlphaBASIC,
especially since (unlike an AS/400 w/ RPG) BASIC easily allowed you to
crash the machine.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd