I'm not a beginner, exactly, and I find the idea of adopting this or
that language construction from C reminiscent of people that "design"
their house by compiling a list of features -- I want pallidian
windows and a vaulted entry and granite countertops and a big
staircase, etc. The result is an ugly mishmash lacking any
architectural coherence. They do seem to sell in the US, though.
And if people feel the need to borrow from other languages, let's
show some imagination and look beyond C...
Charles Yeomans
On Oct 12, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Daniel Stenning wrote:
The "too much C like" argument is common but really pointless in my
opinion. It is a "religious" argument and often intended to suggest
that
such stuff would confuse the beginner. RB is already nothing like the
original BASIC or even VB was like. Mind you, one thing I
definitely want
NEVER to see in RB is the semicolon terminator - ";".
The key criterion should be does the language addition make the
programmer
more productive and do they reduce the nr of lines of code without
adversely
affecting readability, performance or maintainability ? .
I think RB is already a fine language for beginners to "get going"
with,
but omitting such C like stuff merely on the basis it isnt BASIC
then it
will stop professional developers adopting RB for serious and large
projects. If necessary, it would be better to leave all the pure
"BASIC"
learner friendly stuff in the $99 basic RB and move all the "grown
up" stuff
including C-like features , ptr , structures and Declare stuff in the
Professional version. That would be a nice clean split.
I personally see no harm for example with offering the option of
using C
style {} braces as an alternative to using the "End" construct. A
lot of C
programmers coming to, or considering RB as an option, compared to
C# might
find it helpful. Such stuff could be put ONLY in the pro version of
RB, and
an option could be added in Preferences to allow or dis-allow such
constructs. That way the user could decide for himself how he wants
to use
the language and the compiler could pass or flag such stuff
according to the
developers taste or departmental IT policy.
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