Re: My First Computer

["Ross Simpson" <yeah_whatever>]

"BJ" <dontspamme@nosirree.net> wrote in message...

<Big Snip!>

> But, COME'ON people, you still program in BASIC using GOTOs or GOSUBs?

Well I don't. I just rewrite some of those old BASIC programs into Turbo
Pascal which has those Procedures & Functions. TP also supports GOTOs at
some level, but I don't use it unless I'm translating somebody elses Pascal
program.

> TI XB had CALL statements with SUBPROGRAMS since 1980 or so, and
> QBASIC has SUBPROGRAMS and FUNCTIONS (real Pascal type functions, not
> the DEFFN one-liners).

CBASIC really started the caper of having a basic with line numbers being an
option not a requirement. QBASIC stole that feature from CBASIC, functions
are used defining DEFFN, however as you said there more Pascal type
functions & was possible to 'CALL' them!

> Why are you comparing present-day languages to the BASIC of the
> 1970s!?!?

Present-day languages has very little relevance in COMP.OS.CPM! Which means
there is no such thing as Python, which is why one needs to be written. I'm
sure CP/M-86 on the IBM is more than sufficent to cater for the newer
languages (or any of the 16bit machines it was available for, or possibly
even 8 bitter).

> The two major beefs I have about BASIC is GOTOs ill-used by
> programmers to jump around (they CAN have uses, but you must be
> careful in their use), and IF-ENDIFs all over the place, where
> indentation is your only guide to what the scope of the IF-ENDIF pairs
> are. It is in THIS case that I prefer the one-line IF restriction (no
> ENDIF) of the old line-based interpreters. Scope is VERY EASY to
> figure out!

Programs wouldn't be the same if there was no IF <condition> THEN ... ELSE.
But I agree that  nested IFs can be confusing to read. 'C' is the worse for
this.

Ross.