4 ms·
No, because everyone now has high quality free C / C++ / Rust / Swift / Mojo compilers. Interpreted BASIC was the only thing most end users had on those comput
by brucehoult 2y ago
No, because everyone now has high quality free C / C++ / Rust / Swift / Mojo compilers.
Interpreted BASIC was the only thing most end users had on those computers, for quite a few years, until Turbo Pascal and Think Pascal/C changed everything.
Professional software was written in assembly language but at the start of the revolution most of the programs that people wrote themselves, or that you saw printed in magazines to type in yourself, were in BASIC.
It was fast enough for many tasks.
- marshray 2y agoI remember that era. The vast majority of "tasks" that were done in BASIC were simple games. It was all-but a toy. It makes no sense to compare the execution speed of the output of a modern C++ or Rust compiler on one architecture to a BASIC interpreter on another.