Thoughts about Functions, Pseudocode & Natural Language

[Richmond]

On 09/12/2015 12:50 PM, Richmond wrote:
> On 09/12/2015 12:07 PM, Graham Samuel wrote:
>> Richmond, I was actually programming in the 1960s in languages that had ‘go to’ but very few or maybe no other control structures. It was a mess and I made a great many unnecessary mistakes, admittedly not helped by my lack of training and experience (none was available where I was working!), the lack of comment capability in early assemblers and indeed the limited instruction sets in early computers.
>
> Well, I started with MiniFORTRAN and then FORTRAN IV in 1975 . . . up 
> to my ears in GOTO statements.
>> The problem of ‘go to’ is the problem of going back to where you came from: subroutines (procedures) obviously take that problem away, so ‘go to’ is vastly different from ‘gosub'.
>
> The difference is something I hadn't reflected on: not having a decent 
> setup for playing around with BASIC to hand.
>
> Sometimes I wish I could find a way to ship my BBC Micro and its 
> non-standard monitor over here from my attic in Scotland just so I could
> relax in front of a black screen occasionally: it has BBC BASIC on a 
> ROM chip and the things boots up in the blink of an eye.

*Sheer joy!* 
https://muffinresearch.co.uk/ubuntu-installing-the-beebem-bbc-micro-emulator/

Well, perhaps not exactly 'sheer'.

I would *urge all list-users* who have difficulty recalling *GOTO* and 
*GOSUB*, as well as those who are too young to have
"been through the fire" to download Beebem [ 
http://www.mkw.me.uk/beebem/ ] and give it a go. *BASIC* is 
automatically loaded,
one programs with line numbers and as soon as one types *RUN* it 
compiles and runs: instant gratification.

Even if nothing else it shows how far things have come with LiveCode!

Richmond.

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