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From: pes@ux63.bath.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: How fast is AmigaBasic?
Message-ID: <1348@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 25-Jun-87 07:00:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: bath63.1348
Posted: Thu Jun 25 07:00:46 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jul-87 17:35:20 EDT
Reply-To: pes@ux63.bath.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Distribution: world
Organization: AUCC c/o University of Bath
Lines: 33


I'm going to say some nasty words in here, like 'Atari'.  PLEASE DON'T START
another 'my machine is better than yours' chain.  All I really want is a
response of some sort telling me how fast AmigaBasic (standard version,
whatever that means) is as compared to any other commercially available
BASICs for the Amiga, and as compared with good compiled code in any
language.  I don't use BASIC myself, so don't need to know how good / bad /
powerful / weak / etc AmigaBasic is.  I just want a comment on the speed.

The reason I ask is that I've seen adverts for a 3rd machine which include
comparative timings of their own BASIC on their hardware (the machine is
BASIC-oriented, that is it's intended as the main language) against standard
Atari ST-Basic and standard Amiga AmigaBasic.  Their comparative timings
make their machine look like a bat-out-of-hell (well, they would, wouldn't
they?) and the ST and Amiga look like dead snails.

However, I know that in the case of the Atari ST, the standard ST-Basic is
one of the slowest things going.  (In addition, it's so bug-ridden that I'm
amazed they actually got anything to run so that they could do comparative
timings, but that's another story.)  However the 2 best 3rd-party Basics
for the Atari ST are incredibly faster than ST-Basic, and I suspect if
they'd tried them the table would have looked rather different.  (They
rationalize their choice by saying they're using the 'standard maker's
Basic as comes with the machine' -- on the other hand, could buy 2 Amigas or
STs with 3rd-party basic for what they're charging, so I'm dubious.)

Their figures make ST-Basic and AmigaBasic look roughly comparable in
speed.  So, I suppose what I want to know is 'are there 3rd-party Basics
available for the Amiga, and how much faster are they than AmigaBasic?'
(I'm trying to work out a rough guess for what a 'fair' comparison would
have been.)

Cheers, Paul