Computers for children

It is possible to write really bad code in any language, and really good code in any language. I've seen (and written) some very modular stuff in the past in BASIC. I've also seen some of the worst damn stuff written in C or PASCAL... The idea that a language (like C or PASCAL) ensures that you will write good code is a complete falacy... Years ago, BYTE ran some ads for a C distribution (I don't remember the name) in which they compared C ('programming by design') versus BASIC ('programming by trial and error'). The task was to write a program which approximated the drawing of a circle by using straight line segments. The first half of the page demonstrated the program in BASIC, with an example run... whoops, the last line segment doesn't meet up with the first... must be an 'off-by-one' bug in a for statement. So they make the change and run again... whoops, now the last segment crosses the first... (and here's where it gets really annoying)... "It seems you can't do this in BASIC" ... "But in 'C'..." and everything works right the first time. Anyone with a bit of sense would look at the algorithm used... Lo and behold, the algorithms were different. If the one used for the BASIC example had been used for C, and vice versa, the ad could have shown that BASIC could get it right first time while C probably couldn't have done it... I'm sorry, but I truly believe that anyone who looks down on BASIC because the code *can* be spaghetti-code cannot be considered a real programmer in my book... My US$.02 Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com | | Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+