Re: Interesting bug

From: Dan Pop (Dan.Pop_at_cern.ch)
Date: 04/27/04 

Date: 27 Apr 2004 12:16:25 GMT

In <408d8ed4$0$7788$7a628cd7@news.club-internet.fr> Richard Delorme <abulmo@nospam.fr> writes:

>Dan Pop a écrit :
>> In <408a3006$0$7782$7a628cd7@news.club-internet.fr> Richard Delorme <abulmo@nospam.fr> writes:
>>
>>>That's the main point. The lake of competition, the availability of a
>>>simple and inexpensive BASIC made by Microsoft for their platforms, and
>>>other marketing issues can well explain the choices made by Commodore.
>>>So, whatever if standardized specifications for a better BASIC existed
>>>and the machine was powerful enough to handle them, they did not bother
>>>implementing it.
>>
>> Name one 8-bit home computer implementing the "better" BASIC
>> specification in its ROM. Even those which didn't go the Microsoft
>> BASIC way, still took the KnK specification from 1964 as their
>> starting point.
>
>I called that "the lake of competition".

You haven't explained the reasons of this lack of competition, considering
that there was plenty of competition on the home computer market.
An evil conspiracy of the home computer makers?

>>>I just want to show that BASIC
>>>could have been a well-structured language on the family and personal
>>>computer of the early 1980s.
>>
>> But you have provided exactly zilch arguments supporting this opinion.
>> The existence of a language specification is far from being enough for
>> that purpose.
>
>I also gave the following link:
>http://www.npsnet.com/danf/cbm/languages.html
>from which you can read:
>
>- Structured BASIC V6.5 [C64]
>"Flexible new language".
>- Symbolic/Structured BASIC [PET] (1979, Softside Software)
>S-BASIC includes editor, "pre-compiler" and loader package. Allows
>structured BASIC constructs like no line numbers, WHILE and UNTIL loops,
>labeled GOTOs and long lines. Upwardly compatible with PET BASIC.
>
>(the PET was actually not a C64 but an older professional computer from
>which the C64 derived).
>
>So structured BASIC existed on the C64 or similar machines.

Not as part of their firmware, which was the point of this discussion.
I guess even Pascal compilers were available for C64, so no one contested
the possibility of implementing structured programming languages on such
machines. Merely the practicality of having such implementations in the
machines firmware.

>> Write an implementation that could fit in 16 K, along with
>> all the device drivers and the rest of the system management software
>> usually required by an 8-bit home computer and that would deliver decent
>> performance on a 4 MHz Z80A (or equivalent micro of the time) and THEN
>> you'd have a *valid* point.
>
>Of course, I will write for tomorrow what needed several man-years of
>development.

Then, you still have no valid point for your claim.

>> The fact that it took a mainframe or a PC to produce such implementations
>> might provide a clue....
>
>Then, the fact that such languages existed on 8-bit machines proves my
>point of view.

It proves zilch. How much of the machine's resources was taken by the
implementation of those languages? The answer to this question will
show you whether putting such implementations into the machine's firmware
was an economical option.

Dan 

-- 
Dan Pop
DESY Zeuthen, RZ group
Email: Dan.Pop@ifh.de