Timeline for BASIC-PLUS inline operators, do they actually make sense?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 24, 2023 at 15:14 | comment | added | dave | The idea of conditional modifiers seems to have originated in JOSS, which the designers of interactive programming systems of the time would have been aware of. | |
| Jun 24, 2023 at 13:28 | comment | added | dave | @wizzwizz4 - '... because it's only reading the line once' DEC BASIC-PLUS was a compiled language; the source code was converted to 'push-pop code' (.BAC file), probably threaded, and that was interpreted. | |
| Jun 24, 2023 at 7:19 | comment | added | No'am Newman | Coming at this question from a completely different angle, the SQL programming 'language' that I use only has the condition at the end. One has to write statements like 'GOSUB 500 WHERE :KBM = 'Y'; as opposed to 'IF :KBM = 'Y' THEN GOSUB 500. There is no IF/THEN construct (nor IF/THEN/ELSE), only WHERE, making some conditional statements very painful to write. As a side note, I too started programming with BASIC/PLUS on RSTS/E but gave it up (for Pascal) when a listing was taller than myself. | |
| Jun 24, 2023 at 3:09 | answer | added | John Cierra | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 22, 2018 at 21:17 | comment | added | Will Hartung | @MauryMarkowitz BASIC may have started as a teaching language, but it morphed in to an operational language quite quickly. Using RSTS as an example, BASIC was the default environment for it. All of the utilities for system management were written in BP. BP was a very capable data processing system with its I/O functions and virtual arrays and, later, the addition of RMS. BP2 had native integration with RMS. And, today you need only try working on a legacy system, at legacy speeds with a compiler to truly appreciate the value of BASIC. The compile/link/run cycle on those things is just glacial. | |
| May 19, 2018 at 0:54 | comment | added | scruss | I dunno, @MauryMarkowitz: BASIC was developed at the height of the linear programming boom, so matrix work was big and important. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 16:00 | comment | added | Maury Markowitz | @scruss - yeah I was surprised to find them there when I was digging for examples. It seems so out of place for a teaching language. In the DEC market it seems like a reasonable expansion. | |
| May 17, 2018 at 14:53 | comment | added | scruss | The matrix functions are similar to the MAT commands in Dartmouth BASIC (available from October 1964 in CARDBASIC, the batch interpreter; manual here - bitsavers.org/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf) and later in ANSI Full BASIC. They're great for mechanical and electrical engineering problem solving. No 8-bit BASIC that I know of kept the matrix functions. | |
| May 15, 2018 at 17:26 | vote | accept | Maury Markowitz | ||
| May 14, 2018 at 16:59 | answer | added | Will Hartung | timeline score: 8 | |
| May 14, 2018 at 15:16 | answer | added | Tommy | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 14, 2018 at 15:09 | answer | added | Chromatix | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 14, 2018 at 13:47 | comment | added | TripeHound |
@mannaggia Although I never used it, "way back when" (late 70s) I saw some SNOBOL code, and that does something vaguely similar... the last component could be a conditional (or unconditional) branch dependent on the pattern-matching earlier in the line. At the time, I seem to remember thinking this might be "cool" (no need for cumbersome IF statements to break the main "program flow")... nowadays, I suspect I might find it less readable as well!
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| May 14, 2018 at 13:09 | comment | added | Maury Markowitz | @mannaggia - ah, very interesting! | |
| May 13, 2018 at 21:35 | comment | added | mannaggia | BASIC PLUS on RSTS/E was my first programming language (my technical high school had a PDP-11/34). I thought the conditionals at the end of the line were interesting but made code less readable in some instances. That is, you would essentially have to check each line to be sure there was not something at the end that made it not execute, rather than seeing that it may not execute right off the bat. Just my two cents. | |
| May 13, 2018 at 19:35 | answer | added | dirkt | timeline score: 4 | |
| May 13, 2018 at 18:34 | comment | added | Jules | "But perhaps I am missing some sort of additional advantage to this style?" ... well, it'd make FORTRAN users less like they were using an inferior language, for one. | |
| May 13, 2018 at 17:52 | comment | added | wizzwizz4♦ | I think it would run faster because it's only reading the line once and there are fewer tokens etc. but it depends on the implementation. | |
| May 13, 2018 at 17:05 | history | asked | Maury Markowitz | CC BY-SA 4.0 |