Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

Jecel Assumpcao Jr jecel at merlintec.com
Fri May 29 10:59:20 CDT 2020


Liam Proven wrote on Fri, 29 May 2020 14:20:53 +0200
> And I have had earnest youngsters on Twitter and elsewhere very
> seriously tell me that _no_ language could even theoretically be
> immune to the problems of C, because _all_ languages are implemented
> in C at the lowest level.

The modern variation of the Turing Tarpit. At least they come to this
illusion honestly given that you even have people who think implementing
Forth in C is the way to go.

Of course, given that NAND2Tetris teaches them that everything is built
from NAND gates it would mean C can't go beyond the limits of NANDs. Or
that since a microcoded processor has a little Harvard machine inside it
can't do stuff that this architecture can't (like self modifying code).

Sometimes the way to gain something is to take away possibilities rather
than add them. This is not intuitive at all, but it is what levels of
abstraction are all about.

Back to the subject, it would be funny to see their reaction to the
sources for GWBASIC and the fact that it was NOT written in C.

-- Jecel


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