BASIC

[John]

Why does Linux distributors give their value added versions a unique name rather than calling it just Linux? I look at BASIC in the same way, It provides a time proven syntax that is the foundation in most languages. I think I proved that with the CBASIC project using symbol substitutions to flush out the traditional BASIC structure C was built on.

I would like to hear from some of the other developers on this forum and their feelings about the current state of BASIC.

[John]

Since the BASIC developers here must be sleeping, I thought I would share a related post from Mr. Kerry Farmer on the PB forum.

My overwhelming impression is that every (well nearly every) language developed since BASIC was strongly influenced by BASIC.

Every language developer had to include certain functions - every language developer knew how those functions were delivered in BASIC - and so they were strongly influenced.

It is almost as if BASIC was the ancient source of all language developments. The other claimants to this would perhaps be COBOL and FORTRAN but I do not think they have such a good claim. [I knew all these languages quite well once upon a time]. Languages like ALGOL have a much lesser claim. No ASM's would have such a claim.

It is possibly even true that many languages with high level features, when they want to do some real low level coding, use a form of BASIC to do this. Is that a fair statement?