Re: Rewrite BASIC language today?

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:51:21 GMT,  wrote:

> On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:12:32 -0400, "Tom Lake" <tlake@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
>><ArarghMail804NOSPAM@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>>news:dnbq045hsosllvap1r9pans69a0cqe43r0@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:24:21 -0400, "Tom Lake"
>>> <tlake@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <snip>
>>>>It's sickening for a BASIC programmer to see what C programmers
>>>>have done in the name of BASIC.
>>> Just curious as to what you might be referring to?
>>
>>Look at many versions of "BASIC" around such as FreeBASIC.  They've
>>added pointers,
>>unions, function overloading and enumeration to mention a few
>>things.  Maybe even
>>heap management in a few variations!  These are all contrary to the
>>original intent of
>>BASIC.  Kemeny and Kurtz didn't even want the user to know that
>>there's an internal
>>difference in the way integers and floating-point numbers are
>>stored!  The details of
>>the underlying computer should be inaccessible to the BASIC
>>programmer.  
>
> Hmm, I see what you mean.  But dropping all the extras makes it
> pretty useless except for Beginners.

....which was what Kemeny & Kurtz had in mind, wasn't it?

> And slow.  Maybe the answer
> is to come up with a new name for an expanded language whose
> beginnings started with BASIC.  Any ideas?

I think perhaps the OP had in mind existing languages which call 
themselves *BASIC* which are only superficially similar to the 
original. Things like XBasic, or anything from MS. (Actually, maybe 
MS's VARIANT data type was close to something K&K wanted in the first 
place... a data type that could hold *anything*, and the programmer 
doesn't have to think about the contents, just *uses* it.)

>>The computer on which BASIC is running should be irrelevant.
> Data interchange could get interesting in that case.  Everything
> would have to be stored in text files, but then you get character
> set differences,

That would drive me nuts. Probably push me away from the language 
entirely.

-- 
A bug can make your DOS session run off into the bushes
and not come back.
 -- Jeff Duntemann