Author: Roberto Waldteufel
Date: 07:31:52 06/25/99
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On June 23, 1999 at 12:41:12, Jesus de la Villa wrote: > >Hi Roberto, > >I don't want to insult nether the basic language, nor the people that >uses it. >The first language i learned was Basic 16 years ago. >I don't doubt about the actual basic capabilities (i don't know them any more), > but, could be very dangerous for non expert programers to begin with an >unextructured language (I don't know if the one that posted is or not), >you would become vicious. > >Regards. Modern Basic is fully structured. You have to wrap everything up in Subs and Functions, you can choose between local, static or global variables, you get a complete 32-bit in-line assembler that allows you to intermix assembler and Basic, register variables, user-defined types and unions (structures to you C people) and loads of other stuff. It really does offer everything that C does. Like you, many people started out programming in Basic and then graduated to other languages (especially C). If you *liked* Basic, then you probably were a "reluctant graduate" to other languages, forced to give up Basic because of efficiency concerns, but that has become a problem of the past now. The fact that Basic has even overtaken C in terms of efficiency, albeit only by a fairly small margin, is still unknown to many who gave up on Basic years ago when there really was a need for more power than the old interpreters could deliver. Indeed, that awful piece of sluggish bloatware Visual Basic still continues to give a bad name to the language as far as efficiency goes - the better compiler manufacturers do not have the marketing abilities of Microsoft, and so sadly VB remains the only Basic "Compiler" (it isn't a true compiler at all, sort of half way between a compiler and an interpreter) that many have heard of. Those who seek out a better Basic know different. Regards, Roberto
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