On 2003.10.30 20:09 John Hebert wrote: > Dang, Will. Did Bill Gates frighten you as a child or something? You > should talk to a therapist. ;) > > You may not be aware of it, but BASIC was not invented by Microsoft: > http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bergmann/history.html > > Not that I'm defending BASIC or Microsoft, but it was the first language > I learned when I was 14. From a book no less, without access to a computer. > > John Hebert >
Basic was the first language I learned too. I had a Timex Sinclair and also was taught a little in high school on Apple IIs. I made a phone book that pooked and peeked big REM statements in the front of the program for data storage. It was not that bad and things could be done. I'm told that Bill Gates and another flunky dumpster dived to get the source code of their first BASIC. From the dumpster he took it and to the dumpster he has delivered it. Early versions of Microsoft Basic were incompatible with other BASIC and each other! I have two or three of them saved out on floppy in the pack rat pile. My dislike of VB springs from having used it just a little. It was easier for me to learn Win95 API and C++ than it was for me to learn VB. There's just something about the shine on literature, not having access to data, and the intelectual ugliness of VB that gets to me. I don't know what it is, it just makes me ill. Sun has to have done better. Bill Gates was frightening as a child, I'm sure, but he's much worse now. Why do they continue to push such inferior junk? Why have they not implented users at the kernel level? Why do they have such a fear of user choice? Why do they care if more than one person uses Word at the same time? Is it true that they spend more on promoting their junk than writing or fixing it? Like VB, it just does not add up.
