Re: Rewrite BASIC language today?

On Apr 29, 9:54 am, "Tom Lake" <tl...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> "jj" <in...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in messagenews:fv7587$boh$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > How about the average length of keywords? They must have been
shortened to
> > fit in the tiny memories available. Was it good fortune that, say ABS,
is
> > the
> > correct balance between economy and verbosity? Perhaps ABSOLUTE?

The 3 letter function names are long enough for most people
to guess the full name, and without have to memorize a table
of punctuation abuse.

> No, the original BASIC ran on a GE mainframe and had adequate core
> (Known as RAM to you kids!) to run without chopping off the function
names.

Mainframe and "adequate core" are relative terms.  A GE-235
mainframe, on which BASIC was developed, had 8 to 16
kilowords of core memory (with 2.5 8-bit bytes per 20-bit
word, or 20 to 40 kBytes total, less than the amount of
cache memory on some of today's ARM cell phone processors)
and had a memory cycle time of 167 kHz.

Note again that the units above are kilowords (not mega or
giga) and kiloHertz (not MHz or GHz).

GE-235 Brochure here:
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/GE/GE.235.1964.102646091.pdf

A GE-235 does look like it took up a room about the size of
a volleyball court though.



IMHO. YMMV.
--
rhn A.T nicholson d.0.t C-o-M
 Chipmunk Basic: http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic