Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!paperboy!macrakis
From: macrakis@osf.org (Stavros Macrakis)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: bashing BASIC (Was: Functions without side effects)
Message-ID: <MACRAKIS.91Jun14125058@next15.osf.org>
Date: 14 Jun 91 16:50:58 GMT
Sender: news@OSF.ORG
Organization: OSF Research Institute
Lines: 18
In-reply-to: sakkinen@jyu.fi's message of 14 Jun 91 08:22:04 GMT

sakkinen@jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) says:

   ...It was a good and consistent principle in BASIC that every
   statement began with a verb.  I can imagine that it made parsing,
   error analysis, etc. a lot easier.  Especially for a language that
   was designed to be interpreted, and for the 60's state-of-the-art
   in language implementation.

Starting all statements with a verb may be a good idea, but it has
nothing to do with interpretive execution.

Basic was not designed to be interpreted, and its very first
implementation (at Dartmouth) was compiled.  It was a
compile-load-and-go system, so the user didn't see a separate
compilation phase, and the compiled code was normally thrown away
after execution, but it _was_ compiled.

	-s