On 11/08/2010 12:50 PM, Charles Curley wrote: > On Mon, 8 Nov 2010 12:17:13 -0700 > Levi Pearson <[email protected]> wrote: > >> so he has already been "mentally mutilated beyond hope of >> regeneration," as Dijkstra put it. > > I believe Dijkstra was talking about BASIC <shudder /> when he said > that. I don't think anyone has so far recommended that abomination to > Mr. Villa.
Of course it's not for shell scripting, but modern BASIC isn't that bad. BASIC hasn't had goto or line numbers in about 25 or more years now. VB sucked for reasons other than the language itself. Probably still does. Just for kicks I installed FreeBASIC a year or two ago and got many of my old QuickBASIC programs ported and compiled on Linux. Pretty interesting. If it weren't for Python and the expressive power of dynamic languages, I would probably still be using FreeBASIC instead of C for general software development. There are a few folks using FreeBASIC for developing Gnome apps, just as there are some FreePascal folks out there. FreeBASIC doesn't yet have any OOP constructs in the language, so it's mostly comparable in functionality to C and Pascal. It's just as structured as Pascal, but slightly less verbose. I definitely would have no qualms about teaching a child to program in FreeBASIC or even FreePascal, and later have them learn C or Java. Then again, Python would be an even better choice for teaching. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
