>THAT is why beginners should start off with a "trivial" language and
>"trivial" assignments before they get into the real body of programming.
>BASIC is excellent for getting those beginning concepts. Then, as soon as
>those concepts are down, they should switch to a "real" language :-)
While I agree that BASIC is a good starting point to get into
programming, I think that BASIC itself is a lot more powerful than
most people give it credit. I've written any number of database
applications in compiled PowerBasic over the years, some of them
fully able to read/write dBase III format files. One of them was a
modular inventory/sales type program that comprised of nearly a dozen
seperate programs that were only called when needed. The whole
application took up less than 1meg of disk space and was replaced by
a similar program written in FoxPro that took up nearly 10 times the
disk space and lacked in quite a few areas that the original program
was able to handle. I wrote my own functions for sorting and file
handling and such based on the demands of each individual application.
Jeff
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Received on Sun Aug 19 2001 - 12:39:39 BST