NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/comp/lang/pop/69

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-18 | 1.8 KB

Xref: sparky comp.lang.pop:69 alt.lang.basic:870
Path: sparky!uunet!email!vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at!mst
From: [e-mail] (Markus Stumptner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pop,alt.lang.basic
Subject: Re: Ok, so pop *pop* may be a valid lang, but where's basic?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 18 Nov 92 13:43:27 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Followup-To: alt.lang.basic
Organization: DB and ES Subdivision, TU Vienna
Lines: 23

From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (Bruce Garrett):
>         Yah.  Right.  Funny how other languages are allowed to grow and
> evolve, C becomes C++, Fortran goes through it's changes...

...and you get huge languages (C++ is more complex than Ada which for
years was the laughing stock of programming languages), monsters which
retain above all syntactic compatibility while integrating lots of new
concepts into a framework that was not intended for holding them.  All
these extensions are not free from criticism.  As with Basic, the
community is large enough to support such an evolution instead of a
switch to newer, cleaner languages.  They work, and that is sufficient
for their existence (and flourishing).  That's all.  But "good"
languages by today's standards?

If extended Basics work for you, because you have years of experience
in Basic and don't want to waste it, fine.  (Not intended as a Basic
flame, but I would assume that those Basics have not evolved into huge
languages [or have they?] because so much of the work spent on them
was for bringing Basic to normal size.)
--
Markus Stumptner                                [e-mail]
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert![e-mail]
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst