#: 5596 S15/Hot Topics
    27-Jul-90  01:19:06
Sb: #5544-#Is Basic out of date?
Fm: Bob van der Poel 76510,2203
To: Pete Lyall 76703,4230 (X)

Guess I better and my comments to the Basic vrs C debate, especially since I
have resisted using C for quite a while. First, the only time I recall using
PEEK/POKE in Basic09 programs was to do something like changing a string to
uppercase. My experiments showed the PEEK/POKE method to be much faster than
anything else I could come up with.

My biggest complaints with Basic09 are:

1. The primitive editor used. When doing something serious I always used my own
editor in another window, saved the source and then loaded into Basic
workspace. Seems to a waste of time somewhere here.

2. The fact that all "functions" are loaded as separate modules. All those
little modules kicking around always bothers me. Yes, Bill, I know the
advantage of being able to create large programs this way. But having
essentially a seperate program for something like "toupper" just doesn't sit
right with me.

But C ain't perfect either. What I do like about C is the large number of
functions already written (and debugged?), its portability, flexibility and
speed. But its tersness (extolled by some) really makes the learning curve much
longer than it should be. And getting a real handle on pointers is akin to
solving the Gordian Knot.

Dispite these problems I am now using C for most of my programming. I am even
avoiding assembler (which I really prefer) now that I C the light!

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