Re: Interpreter for old basic programs from the line number era

On Mar 4, 6:44 pm, rebel <m...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 18:23:10 -0800 (PST), "R.Nicholson"
<rhnlo...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
> >On Mar 3, 6:16 pm, rebel <m...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 11:12:00 -0800 (PST), thomas.mer...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> >> >Hello,
>
> >> >I wrote a basic interpreter (bas7) which can execute old basic
> >> >programs from the line number era (If you know GW-Basic, that
> >> >was the era).
>
> >> (snip)
>
> >> I feel compelled to ask one question:  why?
>
> >Why not?  There are lots of people who still ride horses,
> >restore steam locomotives, build pendulum clocks, etc.
> >I would suggest that one learns quite a bit from those
> >kinds of experiences.
>
> as an experience-gaining exercise for the writer, it may have some
value.  But
> for the average joe I can't see the point in YABI.
>
> If I ever find the need to run an old GW-B or QB program, I will dust
off GW-B
> or QB and run the darn thing, rather than search the net for some third
party
> product that may or may not run it properly.
>
> I suspect most others would do the same.

Many will do as you do, but quite a few others will
still download many of the other 3rd party, shareware,
freeware and open source Basic programming environments.
I have on the order of 100 listed on my web page below.

Lot's of people find some of these Basic interpreters
and compilers far more suited for their purposes than
trying to find and use an old copy of QB to run in a
dosbox under Vista or VMWare under Mac OS X.

Old fashioned Basic was designed as and successfully
deployed as a teaching language for non-programmers.
There is no other language successful in that dual
role. (Scheme and Logo were never as widely popular,
and C and Java weren't designed for non-programmers.
JavaScript on local web page appears to be the closest
substitute...)



IMHO. YMMV.
--
 Chipmunk Basic: http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic