Salon.com Article Bemoans Demise of Line Programming (BASIC)

[Sarah Reichelt]

On 9/15/06, Dan Shafer <revolutionary.dan at gmail.com> wrote:
> I found this piece <http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/09/14/basic/> on
> today's Salon.com by David Brin interesting, if a bit misguided. There seem
> to be some potential implications for Revolution and Transcript but not as a
> direct replacement for what he's missing. Still, he makes some interesting
> strategic points.

Since I am one who started out just that way - teaching myself to
program using the built-in Basic in my first computer, Commodore
Vic-20 - I have a lot of sympathy for his view. In those days, there
just wasn't the enormous amount of software available, so it seemed to
be expected that you would create your own.

However I think his car anaolgy is valid - people used to be able to
maintain their own engines, but now they are so complex that it's not
possible anymore.

My sons' text books still have Basic listings in them, but the son who
is interested in programming uses Visual Basic & Rev and applies the
same logic. Not having a line-by-line editor doesn't worry him.

So my conclusion would not be that a line-by-line Basic editor should
be included with every computer, but that some easy programming
environment should be included, as it used to be with Apple &
HyperCard.

Cheers,
Sarah