Invisible wrote:
> Come to think about it, if you're going to judge "the best language" as 
> being "the most widely used language", 

I wasn't conflating those two. You're changing "useful" to "best". You said 
BASIC was useless. I pointed out it was more used then Haskell. Now you're 
saying "that doesn't make it the best", which wasn't my contention. Merely 
that you don't have to be the best to be useful.

>>> Excel macros, makefiles and shell scripts are all strictly more
>>> powerful than BASIC in at least one objective way: they all support
>>> recursion. BASIC does not.
>>
>> Makefiles don't support recursion except by invoking themselves
>> externally.
> 
> What, a make target can't invoke itself? I thought it could.

What do you mean by "invoke" here?

>> It's only relatively recently that shell script have
>> supported recursion in the language itself.
> 
> Well... if you say so. I'm only commenting on the state of these 
> languages today (because that's all I know about).

Yes. And I'm suggesting that before you argue about "dead" languages like 
pre-VB BASIC, you learn some of the history. :-)

>> Plus, when you're trying to solve a problem like building software,
>> recursion is a point *against* your solution.
> 
> I disagree.

Why? What is the good use for recursion there? If your goal is to invoke 
various compilers etc, where does recursion fundamentally aid in the process?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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