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From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.lang.misc,comp.windows.ms.programmer,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: ap, Windows BASIC
Message-ID: <ieFH49w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: 13 Jun 91 13:31:05 GMT
References: <1991Jun11.214541.24352@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.ms.programmer
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
Lines: 25

phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes:
> tml@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Tim Long) writes:
> >1) To have a freely available general purpose interpretive language on
> >UNIX systems.  (As opposed to the many more special purpose ones such
> >as awk and the shell).  This can be re-phrased as: To have a UNIX
> >language like DOS has BASIC.
> 
> First thing I do after installing DOS on a PC is find BASIC and erase it.

Same here.  In fact, since the BASIC supplied with this machine was on a
separate disk, I didn't even bother to install it in the first place.

Microsoft has now announced Visual BASIC, a mutant BASIC with Windows.  This
strikes me as being just what the world did NOT need.  The Atari ST has a
number of BASICs similar in concept to Visual BASIC, and in my experience the
PD GEM programs written in BASIC are klunky, unreliable, and suffer from
bizarre user-interface weirdness.

Until now, PD Windows 3.0 programs have mostly been of fairly good quality. 
I confidently predict that Visual BASIC will change that.


mathew