Subj : Re: Is BASIC to be regarded as less than reputable prog lang?
To   : Bob Worm
From : Malvinas
Date : Tue Jul 09 2024 20:29:24

 BW> I tried to self teach C and Pascal, which didn't go well, then I was
 BW> taught both again in university and suddenly things made sense!
 BW> Pointers... structures... now I can do some real programming!
 BW> 
 BW> I hadn't done much since then, 20 years or so, then I got out some old
 BW> computers from the garage and started trying to use BASIC. It drove me
 BW> *mad*, so different. But thankfully both the computers used BBC BASIC,
 BW> which has a very good reputation, lets you mess around with pointers and
 BW> system calls easily and also has an in-built assembler. So mostly today

Structures and pointers are not *the only REAL* programming...
Original GW-BASIC had PEEK and POKE which were a 'weird' form of pointers...
Look, I currently teach a programming course for post-highschool adult students, and after pseudo-code and right before jumping into SQL and PHP we make a quick stop-by BASIC. We use a DOS-Box emulator that comes packed with BASIC right in the same .zip. I usually tell my students to propose a videogame they'd like to create and I "help" them make it (I try to intervene and tell them what to do the least I can), last time they wanted to make a "Battleship game (not sure that's the right name for that game in english, you know that game where people say out loud combinations of letters and numbers and find coordinates in the board and mark down strikes on enemy ships)", and we couldn't find a better suited language for that than BASIC, which comes fully equipped with a fairly robust set of tools and instructions to control what goes on screen. This really speeds up creating "text mode turn-based or action games", and this was the exact case.
There's a lot to learn about coding technique and style from *any* language, actually, IMHO.

Malvians

Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

.... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

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