[geeks] BASIC

[Lionel Peterson]

I was thinking BASIC, then Pascal, then FORTRAN, then COBOL...

Worked for me ;^)

TRS-80 BASIC
UCSD Pascal
DEC FORTRAN-77
IBM MVS COBOL*
C
PHP

*IBM BAL was attempted, but it didn't really stick...

Lionel

On Aug 4, 2009, at 1:14 PM, nate at portents.com wrote:

> I've moved this thread to [geeks] where it makes more sense...
>
>> My learning of (Interpreted) BASIC prevented me from understanding
>> Object-Oriented Programming models, and I don't think I'm alone in
>> this "impairment"...
>
> I've read arguments such as this that claim the opposite:
>
> http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/09/14/basic/print.html
>
> I would tend to agree with that article.
>
> It should be noted, btw, that the third generation of BASIC is Object
> Oriented, so your criticism of it's impairment to your learning  
> later OO
> languages would primarily apply to generation one and two of BASIC.
>
>> That said, I plan to teach my sone (13 years old) to program in BASIC
>> (maybe on a CoCo clone Dragon 64 ;^), "and the cycle of abuse
>> continues..."
>
> You could start him there, then maybe move him to something more
> structured like FreeBASIC or OO like Gambas to minimize the "abuse".
>
> - Nate
>
> Previous thread from [rescue]:
>
>> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 11:40 AM, <nate at portents.com> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 03 Aug 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
>>>>
>>>> But I have nothing but fond memories about hacking on those old  
>>>> Nova
>>>> clones, and BITS BASIC had some *really* cool features.
>>>
>>> No experience with that in particular, but this reminds me of  
>>> something
>>> I've been wondering lately... is there any measure of the impact of
>>> BASIC
>>> on computing?  The reason I ask is that it wasn't until recently  
>>> that I
>>> realized that Wang 2200 series ran a microcoded interpreted BASIC
>>> (dialects such as Wang BASIC and BASIC-2), which other companies  
>>> have
>>> since developed compilers for... I was rather shocked at the idea of
>>> microcoding an interpreted language into a computer.
>>>
>>> All of Microsoft's early success comes from writing and porting it's
>>> BASIC
>>> interpreter to many computer microarchitectures, and now I'm  
>>> wondering
>>> if
>>> it was Microsoft's catering to their developers (which includes  
>>> all the
>>> vertical application "business logic" stuff written in BASIC, a  
>>> lot of
>>> it
>>> by people who aren't exactly professional developers I'm sure)  
>>> that has
>>> ensured their success as a platform.  Professionally, I still see IT
>>> people writing VBScripts today despite it being de-emphasized, and  
>>> at
>>> least as of 2007, there were still a lot of businesses developing
>>> applications in Visual Basic .NET[1]:
>>>
>>> "According to Forrester Research, 37 percent of enterprises use
>>> Microsoft
>>> Visual Basic.NET for development and maintenance of their in-house
>>> applications. What's more, among .NET developers, 59 percent use  
>>> Visual
>>> Basic.NET as their only programming language."
>>>
>>> It all makes me wonder if the real reason competitors (such as Mac,
>>> Amiga,
>>> Atari, Canon Cat, etc.) to the IBM PC running MS DOS had such  
>>> trouble in
>>> the 1980s and 1990s was as much about MS BASIC and all it's badly
>>> written
>>> (and probably poorly documented yet important) business  
>>> applications,
>>> and
>>> their "snowball effect", as it was about the rest of the platform.
>>>
>>> Anyone have any sense of this?
>>>
>>> - Nate
>>>
>>> [1] http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5656359853.html
>>> _______________________________________________
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