Xref: utzoo alt.religion.computers:2551 comp.windows.ms.programmer:3265 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!apple!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!athena.mit.edu!pshuang From: pshuang@athena.mit.edu (Ping-Shun Huang) Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.ms.programmer Subject: Re: ap, Windows BASIC Message-ID: Date: 23 Jun 91 22:16:57 GMT References: <91169.084617F0O@psuvm.psu.edu> <4k4q47w164w@mantis.co.uk> <1991Jun20.034708.2816@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system) Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lines: 35 In-Reply-To: rogerhef@matt.ksu.ksu.edu's message of 20 Jun 91 03:47:08 GMT In article <1991Jun20.034708.2816@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu> rogerhef@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Roger Heflin) writes: > Does your editor also do full debugging? QB's debugger surpasses any > debugger I have found on any Unix machine on relibility and usability. [flame on] I thought this thread (and this newsgroup, for that matter) was focused on DOS programming tools. So bringing in UNIX isn't exactly fair. Heflin praises the implementation of BASIC Microsoft created for MS-DOS called QuickBASIC, and using UNIX implementations of other languages to devalue the worth of other languages? Hey, there are no decent versions of BASIC available on UNIX, either, much less good symbolic debuggers for BASIC programs. Does that automatically lessen the value of QuickBASIC? No. Apples to oranges comparison. [flame off] I don't wish to help fuel a language war. I would like to point out to those warring that what Heflin likes so much about QuickBASIC isn't really the BASIC language itself so much as the implementation -- and while we probably can't come to an agreement about whether BASIC is better or worse than other languages, I think we could probably all agree that Microsoft QuickBASIC is a darn good implementation of BASIC. The interactiveness of the QuickBASIC environment is much superior to UNIX in some ways, but is easily matched by the Borland IDE for Pascal and C/C++. Likewise debugging facilities of QuickBASIC are very good, but Borland TP/C/C++ IDE's have excellent built-in debuggers with the boasted browse facilities, and the capabilities of the stand-alone Turbo Debugger is simply outstanding. But just because these implementations are so good does not imply that there's anything inherently superior about Pascal/C/C++ amongst the procedural languages (or that there isn't) -- merely that these languages are ones which a particular vendor has invested money and development time in. -- Above text where applicable is (c) Copyleft 1991, all rights deserved by: UNIX:/etc/ping instantiated (Ping Huang) [INTERNET: pshuang@athena.mit.edu]