Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)

[wildstar <wildstar128@hotmail.com>]

"Randy McLaughlin" <randy@nospam.com> wrote in
news:lV5Ja.24038$T37.2702@fe05.atl2.webusenet.com: 


> Basic was intended to be a simple language, but intentions of the
> creator has nothing to do with it.  Many useful programs were written
> in more powerful versions of basic.  I know of programs that are still
> being sold that are written in MS DOS's Basic such as Peachtree
> Accounting.  There were versions of basic created just for
> commercial/business environments. Languages like Visual Basic have
> extended Basic into the current windows, but the programs are not very
> related to the original Basic programs.  Like Cobol, Basic programs
> are cheaper to leave in Basic than to re-write in something else.
> 

Well it does have to do with the creators intentions because they 
designed it for serious and yet easy to use and understand for use on 
computers written back in 1964 and has nothing to do with Microsoft. It 
was only determined after 10 years whether it was for serious use or not. 
Then again BASIC was originally a compiled language not a interpreted 
language. Microsoft made it an interpreted language. Tokens where used as 
they represented actual ML code and often a compiled BASIC program was 
compiled to Tokens then compile to binary after tokenization process. 
Then the end result was actual ML. Based on defined routines.

It wasn't until the the microcomputer 8-bit era when decisions of using 
BASIC was impractical for serious use was only because the freakin' 1 MHz 
processors where simply so da*n slow. Assembly simply provide up to 1000x 
performance gain over the intense interpretation process. ML was simply 
better. Then C/C++ came into the scene in the advent of 16/32 bit 
processors and gave some of the ease of languages like BASIC gave but 
much more power overall because C/C++ was upkept to the modern computing 
era. BASIC was simply put on the backseat.