llewelyn wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2019 11:07 pm
Oh, thats rather nice because for once I could follow it without needing someone to explain it to me! It's a little odd in terms of how the English language would state that but its understandable which is more than can be said for most languages. I've had Python recommended to me by several people including my son who's my guru, he was a Navy radar tech. He just wishes I'd let go of ZXBasic but now after all these years I just couldn't. Its so cute and cuddly!
One important consideration to think about is where technology was when BASIC was formed. Before microprocessors (like the 8080, 6502 and Z80) became available in quantity at relatively low prices, typically BASIC programs were run on mainframe or mini computers that had multiple users connected to them via ‘dumb’ text terminals.
Unless you had your own access, user BASIC programs would be submitted on punched cards, or on programming forms. Then they would be entered as part of a batch job. As an end user, you got a copy of the resulting line printer print out.
Then when BASIC was written for the common microprocessors (like the 8080, 6502 and Z80), because the cost of ROM and RAM was expensive, the size and complexity of the interpreter (language) had to be kept small.
The ZX80 only had a 4Kbyte ROM, the ZX81 had a 8Kbyte ROM and the BASIC ROM in a ZX Spectrum is a 16Kbyte ROM. And even then, the relevant programmer(s) that wrote the code for the BASIC that these machines use, used every trick they could think of to try to cram as much functionality in as they could.
BASIC was also based on even older computer languages.
So now hopefully you can see why there are lots of limitations in BASIC compared to more modern languages. Let alone compared to the (very inexact and vague) English language.
And to this day, we humans still manage to continue to debate what is the best way, and hence there are differences in languages, syntax and symbols even in English text and in mathematics. Just look at how many ways there are of writing the date...
Mark