🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8805240408.AA01675@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> siegman@SIERRA.BERKELEY.EDU ("Anthony E. Siegman") writes:
>What I want to point out here are the substantial, and largely unrecognized,
>advantages in terms of
>     --utility
>     --simplicity
>     --and most especially, speed of learning

   First off you're assuming that you already know BASIC.  What if you don't
know anything.  Then LightSpeed Pascal, or Basic, LightSpeed C might be just
as good a
starter enviroment.  Although I agree with your unstated premise, that you
need a simple enviroment first, and then you should move up to a more complex
enviroment such as MPW.

>To start with, for those of you who haven't looked at a modern BASIC lately,
>MS BASIC has:

    NO Data Sturctures:  Where are the records, pointers, and composite
data types.  Although modern basic's have made an improvement, there is
still some problems with the way that Basic handles data structures.  Although
I've found Basic to be one of the best languages for string handeling.
    Also where are the Pascal Units?  Or the C header files.  No separate
compilations, or anything similar to a Unit.  So everything has to be in the
same source file.  No very good for large projects.

>can be as structured as you want to it to be (and a lot easier to read than
>any other language).

   What if you don't know the constructs for the way that your Basic interfaces
with the ToolBox, then is it easier to read than Pascal?  I know the toolbox
interface, not the One that MicroSoft implemented, the one that Apple
implemented.  So all I have to do is look in Inside Mac to find out what
a Pascal Call does.  Most mac programmer have this manual, so given a piece of
code I can look up the way they are doing things with standard reference
materials, I can't do that unless I have the Basic Manual.
   Here again it's only eaiser to read if you already know Basic, but I know
both and would prefer a Pascal, or C, Listing over Basic any day of the week.


>Beyond that, all of the following Macintosh interface capabilities are
>directly and easily available as built-in commands from within basic BASIC:

  But in your list you say there are limits imposed on how much you can do
from this Basic.  If you truely had access to the toolbox there would be no
limit.  So although Basic allows some calles, unless you can have access to
all the calls then you can't make a program as macish as you like.  What if you
want to use a custom window def, or control def, menu def, ect..
  Basic allows a significant sub set of calls to the toolbox, but the ones
missiing are also crucial to working with the Macintosh.

>And again, when you're finished you can have a self-contained clickable
>application, with its own resources, icon, ``About'' box, and so on.

>The canonical statement heard from real Mac programmers seems to be something
>like , ``I spent 9 months reading all 5 volumes of Inside Macintosh, and
>struggling with MPW;  finally I got the picture and could start doing
>things.''  My experience with a class I'm teaching right now is that
>interested undergrads with ``high-school BASIC'' backgrounds can start
>producing simple but real Mac applications within a few _weeks_ of beginning
>programming on the Mac.

   Have you tried Macintosh Pascal.  Wonderful enviroment!!  And you can move
your code to LightSpeed Pascal, and have it compiled.  How about Turbo?
Or even HyperCard!  With HyperCard it wouldn't take weeks, it would take
days.  There are easy to learn alternatives to MS Basic that provide more
functionality than Basic.

>with a real Macintosh interface for your class or your job or your personal
>use, doing it in MS BASIC is the only sensible choice I'm aware of.  You can
>spend months to become capable in MPW -- or weeks with BASIC.

   Or days with HyperCard.  Or even weeks with Turbo Pascal, or LightSpeed
Pascal, or Macintosh Pascal.  Even LightSpeed C would be good since a lot
of code ported from Unix systems is written in C.

   I agree that in some cases Basic is a good choice.  However you appear to
be un aware of other alternative that are just as easy to use.  Macintosh
Pascal in particular is the easiest programming enviroment I've ever seen.
Are there are several good books on using it for "text book" application that
involve graphics, and text.

-- 
David M. O'Rourke

Disclaimer: I don't represent the school.  All opinions are mine!