Thomas writes: > The only right way is to work down from a BASIC on ROM, which is said > to have in part been coded by William Henry Gates III himself, to a > self-made assembler, and then back to Rocky Mountain BASIC on HP > desktops. Finally you move to a Unix workstation (16 MHz and 4 MB of > RAM suffice), learn Bourne shell and C, and be done.
I guess some people who started with BASIC do eventually recover. FORTRAN on 1620s and 370s, C on MTS, Z80 assembler (hand assembled until I finally got an assembler), Pascal on a PDP11, bare metal hex for the RCA 1802, FORTH using an 1802 FORTH system I helped write (in hex), and finally UNIX System III on my very own Onyx. I eventually did do some stuff in BASIC but by then my immunity was established so I don't think there was any brain damage. Perl and Python too after that, of course. -- John Hasler jhas...@newsguy.com Elmwood, WI USA