3 ms·

FWIW those are all third generation "structured BASIC" languages, not what I understand the upthread commenter to be asking about. Obviously you can evolve the

by ajross 3y ago

FWIW those are all third generation "structured BASIC" languages, not what I understand the upthread commenter to be asking about. Obviously you can evolve the syntax into a more popular language, and Microsoft did to great effect. But that's not the BASIC that was "taught in school in the 80's".

skissane 3y ago
> FWIW those are all third generation "structured BASIC" languages, not what I understand the upthread commenter to be asking about. They weren't. Many minicomputer BASICs of the 1970s and early 1980s, such as Wang's, lacked those structured programming features you are talking about, at least originally. They were classic GOTO/GOSUB line number spaghetti code. And huge amounts of business software was written in them. Some of those apps still run today, because the languages have been ported to Windows/Linux/etc. And eventually, just like Microsoft did, they added a lot of those structured programming features. But sometimes you'll find pre-structured spaghetti-style code surviving long after the dialect gained the ability to do better.