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From: grass@uiuccsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.cbm
Subject: Re: comal vs. simon's basic - (nf)
Message-ID: <6395@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Mar-84 22:52:41 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.6395
Posted: Sun Mar 25 22:52:41 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Mar-84 00:38:03 EST
Lines: 40

#R:lanl-a:-396100:uiuccsb:16800010:000:1471
uiuccsb!grass    Mar 25 11:20:00 1984


I have been using Simon's Basic a little now, and I think its claims of
having "structured programming" constructs are pretty overblown. Examples:

1) IF-THEN-ELSE   takes the form IF ... THEN <statement>
					ELSE <statement>
   where statement usually ends up being a goto.  This is structured?
2) Named subroutines....BUT NO PARAMETERS!

The structuring capabilities of this language do not seem very
different from that of BASIC to me.

Simon's basic offers some editing tools, but there are some real
caveats there:

1) Autonumbering and renumbering is nice, but the renumbering
does NOT renumber line numbers occuring in GOTOs, GOSUBs ,etc.
so you will need to search for those and correct them by hand.

2) The program MERGE facility doesn't know about line numbers
and will leave you with duplicate numberings and a REAL MESS
if you merge two programs that use the same line numbers.

What is NICE about SIMON'S BASIC is the added string handling
routines and graphic routines.  But, BASIC is BASIC all the same.
My advice: take a good look at the manual and the example
programs to see if this is what you want.

If it is JUST the added graphics/ sound stuff you want, you might
consider the C-64 expander cartridge that just came out.  This
adds about 11 such primitives to the standard C-64 BASIC.

Re: COMAL.. I have that too, I haven't used it much because 10k
availible space seems pretty skimpy to me.  Simon's BASIC leaves
you over 30k.

 		- Judy Grass