On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:29:04 +0200, andrel wrote:

> On 27-7-2009 21:57, Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> +1
> 
> seen this more often recently here. Yet another cross fertilization of
> the internet, I assume.

Yep, IIRC it comes from Slashdot's moderation system.

Jim

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On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:24:20 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> +1.  BASIC was used as a good entry level way to teach programming
>> logic (just like LOGO and PILOT) back in my early days programming.
> 
>   I wonder if that's the reason why it feels like the majority of
>   programmers
> is incompetent... ;)

Nah, I think it's more that they went from there to machine language (not 
assembler) without working through some intermediaries.  ;-)

Jim

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On 07/27/09 11:56, Warp wrote:
>    Even if we took goto as barely acceptable, its original implementation was
> very ascetic. AFAIK the original BASIC did not support named labels, but
> instead every line of code was numbered (by hand by the programmer), and
> gotos always jumped to a specified line number. AFAIK the numbering of each
> line was mandatory. Naturally this made it quite problematic to insert code
> between existing lines. While it was customary to number the lines in
> multiples of ten, this only gives the possibility of inserting 9 lines
> of code between any existing lines. If you run out of line numbers, you
> will have to start renumbering. And good luck trying not to break existing
> gotos if you start renumbering. (Some later BASIC text editors supported
> automatic renumbering, including all gotos, but naturally no such editors
> existed back then, when even having an interactive text editor in the first
> place was luxury.)

	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.

-- 
ASCII and ye shall receive.

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On 07/27/09 11:07, clipka wrote:
>> QuickBasic was it's highest development.
>
> Just out of curiosity: Did they ever introduce such things as structs (records
> in Pascal)? That was the thing that bothered me most about BASIC ever since I
> first wanted to store a list of data tuples. Using a separate array for each
> "dimension" of the tuple just didn't feel right.

	I've forgotten, actually.

>> I was able to display an image and VBnet seemed to promise good image
>> handling capabilities if one could only figure them out.
>
> If graphics (or any other non-textual user interaction, for that matter) is what
> you want to do, it comes as no surprise to me that you don't like modern
> computer languages. The major problem, however, is not an inherent feature of

	I can sympathize with David. As a kid, graphics was one of the fun 
things about BASIC/QuickBasic. For someone new to programming, there are 
a lot of things you can do using language concepts with graphics, and 
it's a lot more interesting than writing a silly calculator program.

	I think that's what kept me and many away from "serious" languages like 
C/C++ for a long time. No book I picked up covered what I thought should 
be straightforward: How do I color a pixel on the screen. Doing graphics 
seemed to be a lot more complicated.

	I didn't have Internet access, nor did I know anyone who knew much 
programming, so no one pointed me to better ways to do graphics in C, 
nor was I aware of other languages where it may be easier.


-- 
ASCII and ye shall receive.

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On 07/27/09 15:29, andrel wrote:
> On 27-7-2009 21:57, Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> +1
>
> seen this more often recently here. Yet another cross fertilization of
> the internet, I assume.

++

-- 
ASCII and ye shall receive.

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On 07/27/09 11:58, clipka wrote:
> I think it was not before DOS 5.0 that Microsoft started to bundle BASIC again
> with DOS, possibly in an attempt to revive the dwindling popularity of BASIC;
> still it was not as omnipresent as it had been in the home computer era, so it
> didn't manage to attract as many new enthusiasts.

	Not 100% sure, but I think every version of DOS I had had either qbasic 
or gwbasic or basica.

-- 
ASCII and ye shall receive.

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On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:41:09 -0500, Neeum Zawan wrote:

> On 07/27/09 15:29, andrel wrote:
>> On 27-7-2009 21:57, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>
>>> +1
>>
>> seen this more often recently here. Yet another cross fertilization of
>> the internet, I assume.
> 
> ++

LOL

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On 27-7-2009 23:24, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> +1.  BASIC was used as a good entry level way to teach programming logic 
>> (just like LOGO and PILOT) back in my early days programming.
> 
>   I wonder if that's the reason why it feels like the majority of programmers
> is incompetent... ;)
> 
Have you met the majority of programmers?

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On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:43:02 -0500, Neeum Zawan wrote:

> On 07/27/09 11:58, clipka wrote:
>> I think it was not before DOS 5.0 that Microsoft started to bundle
>> BASIC again with DOS, possibly in an attempt to revive the dwindling
>> popularity of BASIC; still it was not as omnipresent as it had been in
>> the home computer era, so it didn't manage to attract as many new
>> enthusiasts.
> 
> 	Not 100% sure, but I think every version of DOS I had had either 
qbasic
> or gwbasic or basica.

I vaguely remember there being a BASIC interpreter in MS-DOS 3.3...

Jim

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"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:

> I remember right the first "real program" I ever wrote was a program to
> calculate ozone
> concentration on a Commadore Pet. It was the first computer I ever dealt
> with
> and after a *very* short time playing with it I was able to write a
> program to replace
> the one we had been using on a TI55(?) calculator (the one with the card
> reader --remember
> that?)

Unfortunately not - I started my computing career no earlier than in the
mid-80s, after having seen (and toyed around with) a C64 somewhere; and I
wasn't older than 12 back then.

> If I remember right, the QuickBASIC and QuickC
> IDE's were models of what a good simple IDE should be. Microsoft was
> good in those days!

They're not bad these days either. It's just that the typical scale of
applications and desired UI paradigm has changed a lot.

> Yes access to Windows graphic functions seem unnecessarily complicated and
> poorly documented. I can't see any good reason for this.

As for being poorly documented, I'm not sure. Might be one of those cases of
documentation written for people already familiar with the concepts. As for
unnecessarily complicated, I'm quite sure this was originally due to
performance constraints in the advents of GUIs, and later due to compatibility
issues.

> I don't understand a lot of what you say, but it fascinates me, I may
> have to learn OOP
> and more about modern programming just for the fun of it.

Go ahead :)

> > Speaking of Borland, maybe they still come with the good old "graph" library and
> > the BGI graphics driver format, in which case I'd expect them to include a BGI
> > to interface to Windows, too.
>
> Maybe it does, if so I haven't be able to find it--or recognize it. The
> old "graphic.h" was for DOS and
> won't work on XP, anyway, and I think the routines are incompatible with
> modern graphic
> cards.

Turbo Pascal - and I think Turbo C/C++ as well - did not use hard-coded routines
to access graphics, but proprietary graphics card driver ("BGI" = "Borland
Graphocs Interface") modules, in order actually access the graphics hardware.
There were drivers at least for CGA, EGA, Hercules, 16-color VGA, and IBM
8514/A, and there was also some 3rd-party 256-color VGA driver available for
the famous "Mode 13h".

I wouldn't be too surprised if people found a way to provide a BGI driver that
could open a window of a particular size and use it as a canvas. Heck, I even
personally wrote a driver for the SuperVGA modes of my own Trident TVGA 8900
card (except for the blitting operations which I found I didn't need) =B)


> > C is really not a pretty language, by the way.
>
> No, but it's fascinating, and in my little experience addictive.

Don't get *too* addicted to it - it has some bad habits, and its own share of
being frowned upon :P

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