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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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