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BASIC for Android

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Re: BASIC for Android

#41

Post by Jtsummers »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #40
Jtsummers wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That same generation of programmers also moved us out of the GOTO hell that they existed in with more reasonable structured languages. There's a reason, and it's not just coincidence, that old school Fortran and BASIC and assembler written in an unstructured manner is difficult to maintain and reason about, while software written in more structured language is easier to maintain and reason about. This is what Dijkstr…

You are missing my point, I think. There is no reason why "language suitable for building gigantic, uber-complex, mission-critical systems" and "language suitable for fooling around with as a beginner" should be the same, and many reasons why they shouldn't.

I never said they should. But languages like the historic BASIC created a set of habits and ideas that had to be unlearned to build reliable, scalable software. Your example of JavaScript as a modern BASIC is a different language. It provides all the structured programming ideas that Dijkstra wanted. Where it fails (failed?) is in its concurrency mechanism favoring a version of callback hell and its weak type system. Those are much easier to overcome than first learning to code by interleaving code blocks and using gotos rather than subroutines, while loops and the like.

Re: BASIC for Android

#43

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

dragonbonheur wrote: post #34
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #26

BASIC. It's still a fun language for toys and prototypes, and Dijkstra is a moron for saying it ruins programmers, but on the other hand, it is kind of rubbish.

That "rubbish" created an industry worth hundreds of millions at the height of Visual BASIC and thousands of programmers were exposed to BASIC as their first language from the late sixties onwards, including Bill Gates. BASIC evolved over the years to become a powerful language to build solid systems with. And unlike Python it could do proper division from the start without loading libraries.

But VB ISN'T BASIC. As in, at all. It may have started out that way, but VB has as much of a relation to BASIC as modern C++ has to C: There's a legacy connection, and C is supported by the compiler, but the actual code doesn't look or feel like C in any way. The BASIC we talk about here is Unstructured and Structured BASIC, which bears very little resemblance to VB, and has many failings.

As for python, I believe you can do division just by using the / operator, just like most other languages. Unless I misunderstood what you meant by "proper" division. Even so, what's so bad about having to load a library to do division? It's not great, sure, but it's not awful, and it's a good deal better than the many sins of BASIC.

Re: BASIC for Android

#44

Post by dTal »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #25
S4M wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought TI calculators used Pascal, and Casios used BASIC.

No, the TI-8x series used in high schools use TI-BASIC, a version of BASIC that makes most other BASIC dialects look good by comparison. Seriously, it's rubbish.

You clearly haven't tried the BASIC on the TI-89, which is capable of symbolic math. Not only does BASIC get full access to the CAS, it also has some really powerful features I've not seen anywhere else - for example, #("some_string") will return the value of the variable named some_string (they call this "indirection").

Re: BASIC for Android

#45

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

dTal wrote: post #44
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the TI-8x series used in high schools use TI-BASIC, a version of BASIC that makes most other BASIC dialects look good by comparison. Seriously, it's rubbish.

You clearly haven't tried the BASIC on the TI-89, which is capable of symbolic math. Not only does BASIC get full access to the CAS, it also has some really powerful features I've not seen anywhere else - for example, #("some_string") will return the value of the variable named some_string (they call this "indirection").

...So, you've never used LISP, or played with a language with eval in it? In either, the above isn't exactly built in, but it is trivial to create.

But yes, being unaware of the 89, I was talking about the Z80 calculators that make up the rest of the TI-8x range, which are still used in schools to this day, which are programmed in a rubbish version of BASIC called TI-BASIC. It sucks. The 68k calculators, like the 89 and the nspire are programmed in a completely different and much better version of BASIC. This is also called TI-BASIC. This leads to much confusion, and to make it worse, there is a third TI-BASIC, which is also completely different, and was used in the computers made by TI.

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