At 05:55 PM Wednesday 8/11/04, Davd Brin wrote:
--- Erik said: > I think YOU miss the point. As I said, you can get > BASIC on Linux
Fascinating. Except that it will be absurd for me to switch to Linux for that purpose. Moreover, while Linux will save the world from the horrors of Windows, it will also set the stage for the Chinese to pull their infamous SINUX gambit, under which we will all be paying THEM royalties for operating systems, within a few years.
I apopreciate the suggestion re PYTHON. And yet... it is most definitely YOU who miss the point.
1. I already know BASIC, so sitting with my son with BASIC would be a straightforward thing. Any reasonable man would expect to be allowed/able to do so.
2. I am awash in books that offer simple line-by-line tutorial programs.
3. All the rich guys at Microsoft got there via a path that they have now closed to another generation. It is insane that ANYONE should have to go hunting and downloading in order to do simple things that anyone with a PC could do ten years ago.
I shall probably hunt/download python sometime... and I deeply resent that I must at my age learn a new language that will be obsolete in no time, just to replicate WHAT ALREADY EXISTED VASTLY MORE CONVENIENTLY.
Again, this has been a 2 year search. If you do not see the irony and frustration, please do not ridicule me for seeing it.
Um, just FWIW, on this Win 98 machine I have Visual Basic, C++, Fortran, and Smalltalk, as well as assembly language. (Assuming I haven't forgotten anything . . .) All but the Smalltalk are compatible with each other to the extent that I can if I so desire or need to frex stick in-line assembly code in the middle of a Fortran program. And, while not a traditional programming language, Mathematica is pretty versatile, too.
Not as many as the couple of dozen languages I've learned and written stuff in on mainframes (and written manuals for and taught), but enough to get by with most days. Not that I have the time to use more than a fraction of all that programming power . . . but it's nice to have it available when I wanna crunch some numbers . . .
-- Ronn! :)
"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever." -- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy
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