John wrote:
ZBASIC is very good. The Atree author liked it. I think he said the edit-run cycle bogs down a lot with larger programs.
While I did say that, my statement may be a bit misleading for several reasons. It is primarily a subjective impression which I intended to apply to large, usually multi-file applications where you might have to swap source files for editing or review. Also, ZBasic doesn't support linking library based routines so reusable code must be included in the source and recompiled. Using the supplied full screen editor requires extra steps since ZBasic uses a BASIC style interface.
Zedcor called the system an 'interpiler' as you could use line entry and editing similar (but improved) to Applesoft or other BASIC environments or work with text based files which were tokenized when loaded. Given a standard 64k IIe or 2c the overall effect would feel slow as the system tends to do a lot of disk I/O, even when doing something as simple as a command line addition such as 2+3. Extra RAM or fast disk access helps this.
In spite of this, it can create some very quick programs. The option to use shared variables with chained programs allows one to create large applications. User defined 'long functions' allows some extension to the language for the developing application. At the time I purchased it, the features and price point made it an excellent option for faster BASIC development. There are a lot of other features not mentioned and IMHO, it would be a disservice ZBasic to dismiss it as simply another BASIC variant.
I should also mention the ZBasic newsletter was available for a while. It was also part of a disk-zine (I've forgotten the name though) which offered routines and programming tips.
Cheers, Mike T.