Re: Computing Editorial (please read)

["Dave Althoff, Jr." <dalloff@gcfn.org>]

Cameron Kaiser <ckaiser@stockholm.ptloma.edu> wrote:
: mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon) writes:
: 
:>If you have already mastered some other programming language, even
:>assembler language, then BASIC has little conceptual content to add
:>to your toolkit.
:>But if you have never programmed a computer, BASIC is a door to a
:>brave new world of automated logic and calculation.  What you do on
:>the other side of that door (including, of course, mastering other
:>languages) is limited only by your imagination and ambition.
: 
: Well put. I learned BASIC on the Tomy Tutor, which had a benighted variant
: most closely related to TI BASIC (which is odd too). However, when I later
: switched to the C64, the principles I learned on the Tutor held generally
: true for Commodore BASIC, and when I picked up 6502 assembly, I had a good
: grounding in how the Commodore worked, and from thence on to Pascal, and
: (ugh) C, and Perl, and ...

The other thing is that BASIC is powerful enough to do Really Cool Stuff 
with relatively little effort.  Over the years I had a lot of little 
projects where I did all the complicated stuff (generally UI bits) in 
Applesoft, and then used 6502 routines to handle the things that couldn't 
be done fast enough in Applesoft.  The combination of Applesoft, Apple's 
unique DOS interface, and 6502 makes for a very powerful, yet very 
painless development environment.

And I wish the computer science snobs would not be so rough on the poor 
GOTO.  I have some really nasty looking code in ObjectPAL (the OOP 
language built into Paradox) that is only nasty looking because I have to 
jump through hoops instead of jumping to the end of the procedure.
 
: BASIC presents a low barrier to entry for programming, or at least it did.
: Monstrosities like Visual BASIC are rapidly destroying this legacy, though.
: For a great programming language that best approximates classic BASIC
: programming on a modern architecture, check out METAL for the Power Mac.
: It's simple to use, same principles and ideas, and builds stand-alone
: executables that even work in OS X :-) the UI stuff needs work, but for
: quick demos, QuickTime stuff, and games and hacks, it's great and 100% free.

Almost agreed about METAL.  I quickly ran into a problem with it, though, 
because even though it runs under OS X, it seems it isn't quite OS X 
aware...it doesn't support Unix pathnames, and it doesn't handle OS X EOL 
characters correctly when reading from files.  And the interface for 
reading and writing text files is...ummm...well, it's odd.  Apple had a 
real simple text file interface for Applesoft, but as simple as it was, 
it was probably the most functional text file handling system I've used.  
Yes, I know, APPEND *never* worked right.  8-)

--Dave Althoff, ][.
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