C70:info-cpm (06/04/82)
>From POURNE@Mit-Mc Fri Jun 4 01:27:09 1982
Try CB80, which is loosely derived from CBASIC, but has
a number of new features including variable declarations. It is
not the ultimate in languages; but it has good random access
files, good string handling, etc, plus procedures and functions,
and considerably less bean counting is required to get a program
running. Of course it IS derived from a form of BASIC and thus
permanently mentally damages anyone who uses it.C70:info-cpm (06/04/82)
>From lauren@Ucla-Security Fri Jun 4 04:05:57 1982
Unfortunately, very few languages that are highly useful on small micros
are also fully supported on larger machines... When was the last
time you saw super-duper-basic-X running on a VAX or a PDP-11?
More importantly, if there is *ever* to be any hope of porting programs
to different machines, the language chosen must require as *few*
"exciting new" extensions as possible. Most of the semi-usable BASICs
would seem to fail this test, as do most existing Pascals. Even C
has its problems in this regard, though the effort tends to be
relatively minor since *most* C standard I/O implementations are
very similar, if not identical, in most respects. LISP seems out
of place on small machines, due largely to the space limitations that
have been mentioned before. I suspect that the real winner is,
you guessed it: FORTRAN. Blechh. But it *is* portable.
Personally, I still stick with C... Especially with Leor's newer
versions of the compiler, it is getting pretty trivial to port
C programs to and from BDS C. ..
--Lauren--
P.S. Except in special situations, I would generally consider any language
that doesn't have some type of structure mechanism to be unsuitable for
all but simple, quick and dirty type programs. That is not to say
that many programs are *not* quick and dirty, however...
--LW--C70:info-cpm (06/04/82)
>From earl@BRL Fri Jun 4 13:40:48 1982
There's one in every crowd, and this time I guess that's me. I can
remember back in my school days at Michigan a really powerful BASIC
system. It rivaled any FTN system (if that impresses you). Of course
is was NOT portable (unless it was another IBM 360/67, which was a
2-cpu multiproc system, and ran UMMPS, Michigan's home grown multi-
processing supervisor). I mean that BASIC was really tough! I don't
know if they still have it. I think Clark Lubbers and Ed Fronzak
(are they out there?) were responsible for its development.