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From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: Re: ap, Windows BASIC
Message-ID: <59Ro417w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: 17 Jun 91 12:51:51 GMT
References: <1991Jun14.174946.5065@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
Lines: 51

mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) writes:
> In article <ieFH49w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk
> (Giving C News a *HUG*) writes:
> >Microsoft has now announced Visual BASIC, a mutant BASIC with Windows.  This
> >strikes me as being just what the world did NOT need.
> [...]
> >Until now, PD Windows 3.0 programs have mostly been of fairly good quality. 
> >I confidently predict that Visual BASIC will change that.
> 
>      Isn't this a rather mean-spirited attitude?  The fact is that the
> average person has an occasional need to write a simple program in an
> easy language.  BASIC (along with a few other tools) fills that need.

That's "Yes Minister" logic. "We must do something. This is something.
Therefore we must do this."

> Saying that the world does not need BASIC (or something like it) is
> essentially saying that only the high priesthood of the programming
> profession should ever write computer programs.

Utter crap.  It's saying that people should be given proper programming
languages to write in, so that they can learn to write properly and join the
programming profession, rather than being mentally stifled by BASIC and left
thinking that WHILE loops are a pretty neat idea.

>      PD programs come with no guarantees.  If I write something and make it
> available to others it's because I think that someone else might want
> it.  If you don't like it or it crashes your machine, there's a DEL
> command in DOS (and rm in Unix, and so on...) to deal with that.

Indeed. Up until now, every PD or Shareware Windows program I've seen has
worked in a fairly acceptable fashion and been at least moderately well
crafted. I am merely expressing the opinion that I would like to have things
stay that way, rather than have to search for 5% of good programs amongst the
95% of complete crap written in BASIC.

In short, PD Windows software is on the whole better than PD non-Windows
software. I suspect that this is related to the non-feasability of using
BASIC for Windows development.

As I said in my article, when BASIC for the ST started to support GEM
programming, I noticed the quality of GEM-based programs dropping
dramatically.

It may, of course, all be coincidence. If it is, I'll be quite happy to use
well-crafted BASIC programs.


mathew