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From: jso@edison.UUCP (John Owens)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Yes, BASIC sucks, but...
Message-ID: <676@edison.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Apr-86 16:23:08 EST
Article-I.D.: edison.676
Posted: Mon Apr  7 16:23:08 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Apr-86 00:15:37 EST
References: <443@3comvax.UUCP> <7900003@ztivax.UUCP> <12688@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <272@vu-vlsi.UUCP>
Organization: General Electric Company, Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 38

> But of course, seventh graders are experienced BASIC programmer already; they
> know to write their programs like this from the beginning!  (And of course,
> they run a global renumberer every couple minutes!)
> 
> How many other people out there started with BASIC?  I'm curious if there are
> other people who wound up avid BASIC-haters precisely because it was the first
> language they learned...
> 
> 			-Colin Kelley ..{psuvax1,pyrnj}!vu-vlsi!colin
> 

I seem to have followed almost the same path that you did.  I started
out with only 4K of RAM, so I tended to fanatically optimize my programs
for space as well as speed, even to the point of starting with a goto to
the bottom of the program, and having often-used subroutines at the top
of the program, in order of use....  I even restorted to multiple ELSEs
per IF, and all those other horrible things.  I found that I could
write relatively bug-free code, as long as I did it all in a short
period of time.  If I tried to come back to it later, I couldn't ever
keep straight all the side-effects of things, and had a terrible time.

Nowadays, I use basic for small (less than 20 line) programs, occasionally,
but I shudder at the idea of a large program written in BASIC.  (An unnamed
contractor recently wrote a *LARGE* software package in BASIC, and it would
be impossible for anyone else to maintain, even though the author went to
reasonable lengths to keep it structured.)

So I suppose I don't hate BASIC, I just consider it impractical.

-- 

			   John Owens
	    edison!jso%virginia@CSNet-Relay.ARPA
General Electric Company		Phone:	(804) 978-5726
Factory Automation Products Division	Compuserve: 76317,2354
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