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From: cdshaw@watrose.UUCP (Chris Shaw)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: (qualityp BASIC) -> NIL
Message-ID: <7373@watrose.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Mar-85 01:20:30 EST
Article-I.D.: watrose.7373
Posted: Thu Mar 21 01:20:30 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Mar-85 04:12:05 EST
References: <7873@brl-tgr.ARPA> <706@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> <467@houxj.UUCP> <733@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> <166@dmsd.UUCP>
Reply-To: cdshaw@watrose.UUCP (Chris Shaw)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 19
Summary: One needn't only ROM BASIC

Actually, I have seen a minimal version of Pascal ROMed successfully
on micros with less than 2k of code. (Or was it 4k.. I don't remember).
Admittedly, it was inly an integer pascal, with no record types, but on
the other hand, one could read the code 2 years hence and understand
exactly what the code was doing within a day ....

    The thing about BASIC being ROMable in a tiny space is a now-accepted
truism, but not always. Bill Gates (Microsoft's owner/Pres) was the first
to do it for the MITS Altair (8080 box). It was thought as an impossible feat
of code-squeezing at the time (8k, I believe). 

    The same attitude exists now for many other languages, such as Pascal, 
FORTRAN, etc, although one could, without too much difficulty, get a tiny, 
stripped-down version of FORTRAN up & running.

Basic for such applications seems stupid, given the possibility of
small compilers/interpreters.

Chris Shaw