clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> >  I wonder when such editors came around. Ever since I used BASIC, there
> > was the RENUM command. Of course, I _started_ using BASIC long, long
> > after its invention.

> IIRC one of the main factors of BASIC's popularity - the all-time famous C-64 -
> did *not* have a "RENUM" command.

> The first computer *I* used, the Amstrad CPC, *did* - hehe :P

  Of course even in editors which did have a renum command, it would mess
up any numbering scheme you might have been using. For example, if you
started every subroutine using line numbers starting from multiples of 1000
(so that you could easily remember that "this subroutine started at line
3000, and that one at line 5000" etc) the renumbering would mess up all
that and you lost the semi-logical numbering.

  There were some BASIC interpreters (eg. in the ZX Spectrum) which supported
jumping to a line which number was specified by a variable. In other words,
you could do a "GOTO xyz" where xyz was a variable. The interpreter would
then jump to the line which number was the value of that variable, or the
next line closest to that number if it didn't exist. (This allowed writing
some elementary switch/case constructs etc.) Naturally the renumbering command
would have no idea about this, and it would break your code.

  Overall, BASIC programs were quite hard to read and understand. Most
editors in the old days did not support such a basic technique as code
indenting (iow. even if you tried to indent the code manually, the editor
didn't support it and you couldn't). This means that every single line of
code started from the same column, which made reading long nested blocks of
code a bit difficult.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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