🚀 go-pugleaf

> Ben Williams writes:
>   Yes, isn't it interesting that two of the most popular general purpose
> languages for writing applications software were not designed to be used to
> write application software.  Has anyone written a general purpose language
> to do what I would think is the most common use of computer programming -
> to write application programs?  And if this/these exist, what are they and
> how do you rate them?  [just curious]

By way of explanation: I cut my teeth on APL and "C", have written
parsers in COBOL and apps in BAL, and have used, in production environments:
PL/I, Algol (HP/3000's, gotta love 'em), Forth, MASM, awk, ST/V and any
number
of one-off application languages. This tedious preface is to head off
those who think what I'm about to suggest is only for pimple-faced
pea-brains: BASIC. That includes some tedious BASIC compilers, as well
as Revelation RBASIC and Visual Basic.

Any language with rich string-handling primitives, a don't-care attitude
towards numeric strings, an interpreter, its own heap management,
and a well-built connection to some sort of keyed file system is
head and shoulders above static compiled language. There is a limit to
the scale of such applications, but there are ever-so-many MORE of them,
than there are of the big crunchers that "need" cobolic efficiency.

What do I work with? SQL, "C" and awk, mostly. But BASIC is my choice
for PC-sized apps, for sure.
--
Mischa Sandberg ... Mischa_Sandberg@mindlink.bc.ca
                 or uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!Mischa_Sandberg
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Engineers think equations are an approximation of reality.
Physicists think reality is an approximation of the equations.
Mathematicians never make the connection.