Anybody else tried FreeBasic (aka fbc)?

Sun Oct 16 14:47:43 UTC 2005

Since software has a long life  - often longer than expected - the issue
of readability and maintainability of the code can be critically
important. There is an argument that this eliminates certain 'write only'
languages, regardless of their power and support. In the interest of not
starting a language war, I won't  mention any language names...

Peter

> On 10/12/05, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Just because it is being used doesn't make it a great language for the
>> job.  Lots of people use java and I am quite sure for most of the
>> purposes
>> there are better language choices.
>
> By the same token, "good enough" can often be good enough.
>
> If you try to construct the "ideal" language for each sort of
> application, you're liable to wind up with FORTH or with someone that
> yacc's every problem to death, creating Yet Another Language for
> anyone customizing the system to learn.
>
> There are a number of langages around which there has grown enough
> "infrastructure" for them to be pretty usable for a pretty wide set of
> applications, whether they are forcibly 'ideal' or not.  Java is
> certainly one of them.
>
> The set that I'd think of would include:
> - C, for sure, as there are boatloads of libraries (GNOME being
> probably the most extensive) and secondary tools (yacc/flex/bison/...)
>
> - C++ (which has similar huge sets of libraries and additional tools)
>
> - Common Lisp (where there's *some* weakness for GUI tools, but
> there's a LOT built into the base language that, in other languages,
> would be in extended libraries).  You can get SQL mappings to access
> most popular databases, there are plenty of web tools, and such.  You
> can extend the language via macros if there's a need to create custom
> quasi-languages.
>
> - OCAML has attracted enough libraries and parser generators and such
> that people can build sophisticated systems using it.
>
> - GNU Ada includes a sophisticated set of libraries including bindings
> to various databases, GUI toolkits, web tools, and such.  An
> interesting bit is that it handles complex string parsing via a
> library that provides equivalent functionality to SNOBOL, a noted
> language of yesteryear.
>
> - Perl and Python and Ruby and PHP have attracted plenty o libraries
> which combine with native string handling to make them pretty easily
> adaptable to do lots of stuff...
>
> Amongst these, it's arguable that Java and BASIC are a bit less
> powerful as they haven't been quite as big on providing parsing tools,
> but the sets of libraries for doing DBMS and GUI stuff have generally
> been big enough and the "neato development environments" tempting
> enough that people find them suitable for what THEY regard as "general
> purpose" work.
>
> Someone who claims any of these are suitable for THEIR purposes is
> quite likely to be right.
>
> All of them *are* compiled languages (whether that extends to it being
> native object code or not), and are quite likely to be fast enough if
> the expected bottlenecks can be expected to be:
>  a) User interfacing (where the user has to move mouse or type
> something to have things proceed)
>  b) String processing (which can harness high speed compiled libraries)
>  c) Web processing (where the language can probably saturate bandwidth
> unless you have a big pipe)
>  d) Database processing (where disk I/O is probably the slow part)
>
> "Best" is always in the eye of the beholder.  These can probably all
> be "sufficiently suitable" for someone skilled with each...
> --
> http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/linux.html
> "The true  measure of a  man is how he treats  someone who can  do him
> absolutely no good." -- Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml
>

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml