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From: CAH0@bunny.gte.com (Chuck Hoffman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: ** Is MS QuickBasic worth looking at?
Message-ID: <11373@bunny.GTE.COM>
Date: 14 Jun 91 18:44:27 GMT
References: <51051@muvms3.bitnet>
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Organization: GTE Laboratories, Inc.
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In article <51051@muvms3.bitnet> mcguffey@muvms3.bitnet (Michael McGuffey) 
writes:
>
> Does anyone have any experience using Microsoft's QuickBasic.
> 
> Should it be discounted as a toy language or can it be used for 
developing
> serious applications?  In particular, can it create dialogs, alerts, 
access
> resources, etc.?  What about getting to the toolbox?

Michael,  the question which came to my mind was "Why would QuickBasic be 
under consideration for Mac application development?"  Maybe because you 
have a lot of prewritten [someBrand.basic] programs which you want to host 
on a Mac?  If so, you could just use the console I/O and you wouldn't need 
a development package.  Or, maybe you have programmers who already know 
Basic well, and don't know Pascal or C so well.  Believe me, compared to 
the complexity of learning Mac application programming, learning C or 
Pascal is really trivial.  That is, although C or Pascal education might 
add several weeks onto a project, the task of developing your first 
"real," *conforming* application will be so much greater that the 
additional weeks at the front end will seem like nothing.  I would say:  
Bite the bullet and learn C or Pascal first, then take advantage of the 
more complete development environments which are available.  Symantek's 
THINK C (including compiler, debugger, libaries) is around $150 mail 
order.


Chuck Hoffman, GTE Laboratories, Inc.    |  I'm not sure why we're here,
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