In article <BxoIzG.H94@access.digex.com> bruceg@access.digex.com (Bruce Garrett) writes:
>
> Every now and then some idiot asks me why I stick with Basic and not
>learn to use "a Real(tm) language like [insert name of Real Language here]"
>and I respond politely that I'd rather swim in a pool full of rabid weasels.
>I have deadlines to meet. If I wanted to spend my time generating or
>maintaining tens of thousands of lines of obscure obtuse and hard to debug
>source code I'd go work at a University or for the Government or somewhere I
>didn't have to show a profit for my time spent.
>
> IF BasicKnowledge%(Opinion$) < 0 THEN Opinion$ = ""
>
>-Bruce Garrett
Well said. Basic, like any other language, can produce excellent
results, IF the programmer knows what he (or she) is doing. It just
happens to be easier for a poor programmer to write bad code using basic
than it is for the same lousy programmer to write bad code in Pascal.
Flexibility is also Basic's strength. You can force Basic to do things
that Pascal, Modula, or Fortrash just will not do.
As for my own personal programming in basic, I just won a
competition pot on by the Forging Industry Education and Research
Foundation with a project I did incorporating a QuickBasic program which
evaluates the effects of friction during metal forming processes. The
program is tight (under 2,000 lines), and incorporates VGA Graphics to
produce research quality graphs. Not bad for a silly undergrad, huh?
-Joe Skaggs
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