The Pervasive Use of BASIC

The Pervasive Use of BASIC

[Don Tyzuk]

Much of the debate on c.l.a. about "which p.l. to use?" has been
characterized as un productive.

I disagree.

It's important to engage in philisophical discourse about this
question, -- in the end it will be a case of judgement to 
select which p.l. to use.

Each time a particular p.l. is selected for a project, it adds
to the weight of evidence for or against its employment.

BASIC, BBx (of Texas), is a major force in Atlantic Canada's
software industry.

Why? I suspect because it's interpreted, not compiled.  Changes
can then be made while the end-product is running.  Re-compilation
and the necessary interruption in service to test and start the
newly modified application is not needed.

Is the app. mission critical? 

Yup.  I know that many municipal governments and large public
institutions rely on accounting software written in BBx.

I also know of flaws in these installed systems that have 
resulted in large monetary under-billings.

It's a pretty large leap from interpretted languages to software
quality, and I know I'm preaching to the converted, but in the
absence of time (or the knowledge) to publish a refereed paper,
it's my two cents worth for Team Ada.

-- 
Donald Tyzuk				| don.tyzuk@acadiau.ca
Undergraduate student			| P.O. Box 1406
Jodrey School of Computer Science	| Wolfville  NS  B0P 1X0
Acadia University			| Canada

Re: The Pervasive Use of BASIC

[Tom Quiggle]

In article <1994Nov15.225242.27655@relay.acadiau.ca>, 841613t@dragon.acadiau.ca writes:
> [author expressed preference for BASIC over Ada]
> Why? I suspect because it's interpreted, not compiled.  Changes
> can then be made while the end-product is running.  Re-compilation
> and the necessary interruption in service to test and start the
> newly modified application is not needed.

This is not a feature exclusive to interpreted languages.  We (SGI)
demonstrated this capability for Ada applications at the TriAda
conference in Baltimore last week.  Our Debugger is capable of
attaching to an executing process, modifying an Ada subprogram,
recompiling the modified subprogram, and patching the modification into
the executing process -- all without restarting the program.  This
feature of our multilingual debugger is refered to as "Fix and
Continue" and works for Ada9x, C, and C++ (not sure of the current
status for Fortran and PowerFortran).

> -- 
> Donald Tyzuk				| don.tyzuk@acadiau.ca
> Undergraduate student			| P.O. Box 1406
> Jodrey School of Computer Science	| Wolfville  NS  B0P 1X0
> Acadia University			| Canada

------
Tom Quiggle                                                quiggle@sgi.com
Silicon Graphics					   (415) 390 - 2884