Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcnc!rti!bcw
From: bcw@rti.rti.org (Bruce Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Protection mode in BASIC
Summary: BASIC as a development tool
Message-ID: <4006@rtifs1.UUCP>
Date: 5 Aug 90 12:15:56 GMT
References: <4020@sonata> <1990Jul31.124048.19015@druid.uucp> <1037@wyvern.cs.uow.edu.au>
Distribution: alt
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC
Lines: 60

In article <1037@wyvern.cs.uow.edu.au>, ph@cs.uow.edu.au (Rev Phil Skinque, DD (Ret.)) writes:
> In article <1990Jul31.124048.19015@druid.uucp> darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy 
>  J.M. Cain) writes:
> >
> >[...] first let me mount my soapbox.  If you are writing programs
> >for commercial sale you shouldn't be using BASIC.  If not you still shouldn't
> >be using BASIC for anything but quick and dirty stuff.  If you feel you must
> >use BASIC then you shouldn't be protecting them but rather let others see the
> >actual code.  There are two benefits to this.  Others learn from you and some
> >of them may be able to suggest improvements in the code for you.
> 
> Hmmm... please explain the logic underlying these comments. Why shouldn't
> people use BASIC? And why should they sell unprotected software? Methinks
> you've not thought this through. There are reasons why someone might want
> to use BASIC, and reasons why they might want the slender bit of protection
> that can be had with the standard BASIC interpreters. Your comments sound
> like religion to me.

When I first saw D'Arcy's article I thought he was referring to the
GW-BASIC interpreter (and its BASICA cousin distributed on the IBM-PC)
rather than to the language itself.  Reviewing the article that seems
to have been a reasonable interpretation, but his later article makes
it clear that he also objects to the language.

I think it's reasonable to argue that nobody should write commercial
programs in GW-BASIC or BASICA.  Not only is the language accepted by
those products fairly restricted, but their interpretive nature
places a great deal of unnecessary overhead on the program's execution.
Not only that, distributing a program in this form requires the user to
obtain GW-BASIC (which is not, alas, universal on PC's, though it's
pretty common).  The only reason you'd want to distribute a program 
written in GW-BASIC or BASICA would be that you want people to be able 
to see (and possibly modify) the code.

But this is not the same thing as saying that nobody should write
commercial programs in BASIC!!  If you like the BASIC language, you
owe it to yourself to look into things like the QuickBASIC compiler
or Microsoft's full BASIC development system.  The QuickBASIC product,
especially, combines a pretty nice development environment with fast
execution and lots of language features beyond GW-BASIC and BASICA, 
at a _very_ reasonable price, and has almost complete source level
compatibility with GW-BASIC and BASICA.  I don't understand why anyone
would _want_ to use GW-BASIC for commercial products (even small ones)
after having tried QuickBASIC.

Now I'm not a great fan of BASIC;  most commercial programs I've
written are in other languages that are less awkward for the sorts
of things I'm trying to do.  As a language it's not as bad as its
detractors try to make out (I think a lot of them don't realize that
the language has changed a lot since the days of CP/M BASIC and
before), but it still shows some of its heritage and this makes some 
complex operations difficult.  But for an awful lot of practical use, 
these operations are irrelevant.  In fact I have to admit that a 
few commercial programs I've written _have_ been in BASIC, either on 
QuickBASIC or VAX BASIC, though I am not now a heavy user of either.

Let's not get into wars about "My language is better than your
language" - these things are tools, not religions.

						Bruce C. Wright