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Date:     Tue, 28 Apr 87 15:24:53 EDT
From:     ORD JL (PHYSICS) <JLORD@WATDCS>
To:       INFO-ATARI16@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU

Some user's comments on Fast (Cartridge) BASIC (by Computer Concepts in
England) to supplement the review in May 87 Antic:
1. The review is misleading in one important respect. There IS a runtime
package (in fact two of them) which enables programs to be run without
the cartridge. I use the cartridge port as a 16-bit bidirectional
interface for process control, and convert the operating program to a
stand-alone .PRG file.
2. From the user's (as opposed to developer's) point of view Fast BASIC
is a complete software system with an integrated assembler and documented
keywords in place of (undocumented?) system calls. The assembler supports
the full set of mnemonics (which is more than A Seka does), and the only
feature I find annoying is the need for a BASIC loop to execute the 2
passes. There are a vast number of keywords, but they are all upper case,
and you are warned that it is safer to use lower-case variables.
3. Fast BASIC is amazingly fast for an interpreter (and shows just how
bad ST BASIC really is). I use the Infotek benchmark (created some time
ago to test HP9830 calculators):
FOR i=1 TO 100:k=SQR(INT(i+i~SIN(i))*LN(i)/ABS(i-COS(i))~SQR(i)):NEXT i
(Only the LN is peculiar to Fast BASIC). The benchmark runs twice as fast
in Fast BASIC as in ST BASIC, and I expected my optical analysis program
to do the same, but it ran much faster, executing a 60-second ST BASIC
calculation in only 13 seconds. The Infotek benchmark shows up one of
ST BASIC's other problems - a progressive error in k beyond i=90:
      i    k (ST BASIC)   k (Fast BASIC)
     90    1.34049E-08    1.340492E-8
     95    7.60044E-09    5.512914E-9
    100    7.06607E-09    2.240934E-9
4. Fast BASIC certainly has its share of problems. One unusual one I
found is that it evaluates k=EXP(-x) as -1 when x=0, and as the review
points out it does like to throw bombs up on the screen (making you glad
that you have a bomb-proof ram disk).
5. Things to note when converting programs to Fast BASIC:
(a) Fast BASIC tokenizes ASCII files on input, and if it runs into
    trouble it bombs - it is safest to insert \'s (for comment) into
    ST BASIC programs before loading in Fast BASIC and editing.
(b) If you BLOAD and BSAVE floating-point arrays you will find that
    Fast BASIC and ST BASIC use different floating-point formats.
6. Programs in Fast BASIC can be written in PROCedure format with local
variables and without the GOSUBs, line numbers etc. which so outrage
computer scientists. They might even get to like it, but I suppose they
will claim (correctly) that it is not really BASIC.
]
Jack Ord, Physics Department
University of Waterloo