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Re: KBasic
by Carbon on Monday 11/Jun/2001, @03:55
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I really wasn't saying anything about KBasic in my post above, I was just blabbering about Python. I haven't used KBasic myself, and there's a reason for that : the Basic language itself is sucky. I have yet to seen it done properly, and the closest it ever came to being useful, Visual Basic, was so utterly proprietary, and the IDE was so utterly useless, it was silly.
Basic was designed as an introductory language before moving on to something more powerful and useful. In much the same way as the Athera widget set, it was taken beyond this model and people attempted to use it for useful stuff. The result was horrendously difficult to read and just plain stinky.
I guess my point is, if you want a language that's easy to learn and still useful, including GUI stuff, try (in the near future :-) KDevelop/Python/PyKDE. Attempting to have people write useful progs or even "Hello World" progs with Basic will just give them bad programming habits. Believe me, I started out on Visual Basic, and the minor inconsistencies with every other language out there (no semicolon at end of statement, '=' having two meanings) wreaked havoc for me . When I started out on PHP, I was constantly and annoyingly assigning variables instead of comparing them in 'if' clauses.
Your question isn't disturbing though! Believe me, although Basic specifically is bad, it's always good to have a simplistic, easy-to-learn, RAD-oriented programming language, as long as it's not too proprietary. But perhaps this would really be more suited toward (dun dun dun) Gideon/Python/PyKDE! :-) |
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Basic and KDE : what policy ?
by Alain on Wednesday 13/Jun/2001, @22:43
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When I wrote my last posts, T was hesitating to say something like :
Please, I only want to have answers about my questions, please don't answer something like :
> the Basic language itself is sucky
> Basic will just give them bad programming habits
> Basic specifically is bad
and so and so...
Hmmm....
I don't want to answer about such things. Only I agree with the page ""Why is KBasic useful for the Linux community ?" : http://www.kbasic.org/1/manifesto.php3
I try an other way for my question :
Gnome has a policy about Basic (it is GBasic and screenshots show it is advanced). What is the policy of KDE ? Let the Basic only out of Gideon and the other languages (even some few used as fortran), or let work together Gideon and KBasic ?
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Re: Basic and KDE : what policy ?
by Carbon on Wednesday 13/Jun/2001, @23:22
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Well, that really was my answer : KDE's policy on Basic should be : "No Basic allowed".
On the other hand, this is only my opinion. If the majority of the KDE community disagrees with me, then I will bow (grumbling and griping all the way, but still bowing :-) to their vote. Bazaar development is never about a huge group of people, such as the large and wide-spread KDE development team, obeying the commands of only one person.
Also, please don't take my posts as a flame against KBasic. I'm absolutely fine with the objectives of KBasic, as long as it's not (IMHO) a language that shouldn't even exist in the first place. Moreover, I would be delighted if the KBasic team proved me wrong and built a Basic-oriented programming tool that knocked everyone's socks off I'm just highly doubtful that this can be done with Basic. Here's why :
1) There is not currently a significant existing Basic codebase, at least there isn't that I've ever heard of. Most Basic apps are either based on a proprietry, ultra-closed extension of Basic (i.e. Visual Basic), or are (for the most part) really, really old console apps. If I am wrong (and I might very well be) someone supply a URL to some sort of Open Source Basic-based project repository.
2) Basic teaches bad programming habits : Evil, old-fashioned things like GOTOs, which should never be used, and also auto-sensing of certain syntaxes to the point where certain methods become useless (such as what I mentioned earlier about the = sign).
3) There are better alternatives. I am aware of several languages that are much cleaner then Basic, but still easier to learn. For instance, Ruby or PHP (which has no KDE bindings currently, but it might be worth looking into).
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Re: Basic and KDE : what policy ?
by Alain on Thursday 14/Jun/2001, @04:34
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Mr Ayatollah said :
> KDE's policy on Basic should be : "No Basic allowed"
Now it is a bad answer, because KBasic exists.
Why is KBasic useful for the Linux community ? : http://www.kbasic.org/1/manifesto.php3
My question was :
> > What is the policy of KDE ? Let the Basic only out of Gideon and the other languages (even some few used as fortran), or let work together Gideon and KBasic ?
And I add :
Are some contacts existing between the Gideon team and the KBasic team ?
If no, I hope that such a communication will be open...
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Re: Basic and KDE : what policy ?
by Carbon on Friday 15/Jun/2001, @04:31
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No, you misunderstand : I'm totally for KBasic, and I'm totally for it's objective of easy RAD. It's just that the language Basic, is frankly awful!
I have read that manifesto, and (please don't take this as a troll, it's just my personal opinion) English-like _takes away_ from the usability of a programming language. First of all, not everyone knows English, and making use of a programming language totally or almsost totally dependent upon knowledge of a certain spoken language is restrictive to those who don't know that language.
Moreover, English is not a good language for logical constructs. The point at which someone can write code by simply typing in, in their native language, what they are thinking, it is no longer programming, it's automagical. It may be possible, but it certainly isn't with Basic in it's current form, because right now Basic isn't even close to a direct translation of English into machine-compilable form. The manifesto seems to imply this, but this is not true, Basic follows very specific syntax rules, just like any other language.
Also, (again IMHO) Basic teaching bad programming habits is not a non-issue. Even if you never use another langauge then Basic, it still makes it incredibly difficult to debug your code. Bad programming habits are not entirely about optimizations, as seems to be implied by the manifesto. Rather, it's about writing clean code that _makes sense_, not just to the compiler but to the writer 3 months later, and to other people wishing to understand the code.
What I would suggest for an easy language is (yeah, I've said this before, but I sure do enjoy driving my point home! :-) PHP. PHP is nice in that it borrows from what's good about languages such as C, perl, etc., but avoids low-level stuff as much as possible. PHP is already capable of a huge amount, it's a well established language that already has an inceredible userbase in the Open Source community. It's currently the most popular module on the most popular web server in the world!
Finally, I really wasn't trying to answer your question about Gideon/KBasic compatibality :-). I was just stating my personal take on the whole topic of Basic.
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Re: Basic and KDE : what policy ?
by Damo on Monday 06/Aug/2001, @11:50
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Basic Coding != Bad Programming Practice
It's a myth these days -- the language provides a GOTO..it doesn't force you to use it. :)
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Re: Basic and KDE : what policy ?
by Derek on Friday 08/Oct/2004, @08:40
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The "Goto problem" is a wrong problem : Other languages have it, including C.
Anyway, everyone should be free to use the language they like without being put in ghettos...
Have a nice week-end.
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Re: Basic and KDE : what policy ?
by Ben on Monday 28/Jul/2003, @17:15
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Looking down your nose at basic is exactly why Linux is not more successful. Most windows apps are developed with basic. Enabling this ability for Linux would kick off the biggest development spurt in the history of development spurts. It is petty and short sighted to take the attitude that basic is inferior. Make it superior. Bring those millions who develop things for work they do that keeps them using bill's junk. All the time I have to develop small apps to control some device or make some computation etc. I do this in vb because it is simple and quick. I have tried to make sense out of the socket wrench set plethora of compilers and environments. I don't have a life time to try and make something work. vb works now and fast and uses the c compiler so it executes plenty fast. Or you could just continue on believing the world will adopt what ever you decree. ms works because they try to fill markets like the one you are ignoring.
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Re: Basic and KDE : what policy ?
by AC on Tuesday 29/Jul/2003, @04:02
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Is this because Basic is such a brilliant language, or because Basic is just one out of many easy to use languages and the one Microsoft decided to use for its RAD tool?
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Re: Basic and KDE : what policy ?
by Ben on Wednesday 30/Jul/2003, @15:09
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It is because so many people/companies use it to develop real world applications. There is a large population of developers just waiting for this to happen. I don't know anyone these days that loves ms or wouldn't like to see Linux be successful. Linux developers have been so long concerned with the operating system, desktop and basic office tools that I don't think they are aware of the real world apps developed in vb. I am in radio and all the database software, which we use to analyze ratings, do traffic logs, accounting etc., are all developed with vb as are most other special purpose softwares. I write engineering programs in vb that are otherwise unavailable to me. While there are probably legitimate arguments regarding quality of these programs, there is the reality that vb brings the possibility of programming to professionals in disciplines other than programming, where their expertise is important. Gbasic set out to develop a vb compatible tool. Assuming it would work, that would instantly make available a huge number of programs. It, like all the others, seems to be dead in the water. Kbasic is dormant. Ybasic almost works has years to go. All these people are working alone and can’t seem to get together. Python with a rad environment like boaconstructor is the one most often put up as a replacement. I am learning that now but I don’t believe most people would go through what is necessary to find/install all the necessary programs then learn a completely new language. Can it really be that hard? Are Linux developers just biased against it? Reminds me of the old saying "cutting off your nose to spite your face". In other words somewhat self defeating. Someone explain this to me please.
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Re: KBasic
by davcefai on Sunday 03/Oct/2004, @04:48
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I have to disagree with the "Basic is bad" generalisation. Bad for whom? Bad for what?
Remember that BASIC started out as an 8K ROM on computers which had from 16 to 64 KB RAM and ran at 1MHz. I suspect that a lot of the initial features were dictated by these limitations. Since then the language has developed out of all recognition. I personally started with Sinclair (Timex in the US) Basic and worked up through IBM Basic, PBasic, CBasic under CP/M, TurboBasic and the Visual Basic from VB3 upwards. With every move (over 25 years) I have been able to port programs I wanted to.
Today, under Windows, I use VB6 and VBA in the MS Office suite. I can use MS Access or VB6 to access MySQL amd MS SQL Server databases with virtually no limitations. "Dave, we need to track the value of XXXX every minute and produce graphs accesible only by Production Managers" generally results in 10 minutes work on the Control System, 20 minutes on the Data Logging app (written in VB6) and another 20 in MS Access to produce the client module.
Unfortunately this type of functionality seems not to exist currently under Linux - AND I DESPERATELY WANT IT TO! There must be a whole horde of people out there with similar needs to mine. An elitist "who needs BASIC anyway" mindset is only going to slow down the takeup of Linux.
Take OpenOffice. They dumped BASIC in favour of a different language. It has made the migration from MS Office to OpenOffice EXTREMELY difficult. Yes you can migrate, but at the expense of dumping all the macros and custom code one had in MS Office. In other words, desirable as OpenOffice (and StarOffice) is, there is a serious hurdle to overcome in migrating. To my mind the problem is not "retraining" users - this is mostly necessary to stop the whining of "It's so different and not powerful enough for my needs" - but the rewriting of all the custom stuff in what appears to be a cumbersome and convoluted language, which is intended to be an "improvement" on BASIC.
My view: forget the linguistics, the purism and the elitist views. BASIC has worked well for years and is familiar to LOTS of people. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. On the other hand having it available will make Linux a lot more attractive to prospective migrants. Don't get me wrong, I prefer Linux to Windows and OpenOffice to MS Office but the lack of BASIC is a major handicap.
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