At 07:55 PM Wednesday 8/11/04, Davd Brin wrote:
> There are many freely and easily available > compilers in many > languages so this doesn't really disturb me. I've > heard Yet Another > Basic is good (though I haven't used it myself): > http://www.yabasic.de/
I shall try ybasic, thanks.
But after the horror of trying xbasic and qbasic and all the others, I do not expect much success.
Ever tried S-Basic? The "S" stands for "structured". It was someone's idea of an illegitimate offspring of Pascal and BASIC. Frex, you had to declare all your variables by type and size at the beginning of any program, then write your regular BASIC program . . .
All were created by techies who suffer from techie-disease... an absolute assumption that everyboddy who downloads their compiler will instantly and miraculously know how to use it.
Not to mention frex in the case of S-Basic that the INT() function did not work normally for negative numbers, meaning that it took forever to make those calendar conversion (date <=> JD) routines I was trying to get to run on that machine to give correct answers rather than ones that gave results which were wrong by a day or two . . .
The manuals are gibberish.
Marketing guy: "We're shipping the new system next week. Maybe it's about time that we ought to run an ad for a tech writer to write a manual."
(I've been a tech writer. I don't read manuals either, at least not until everything else fails . . . )
There is nothing at all resembling a simple place to write line by line code and simply typr "run".
> > For your son, maybe you'd also want to try teaching > him LOGO. I > googled up a free LOGO version for Windows here: > http://www.softronix.com/logo.html
Thanks also for that. But I did try to explain my frustration. I already know BASIC. I have books. I have a zillion sample programs that are EXACTLY what I want to teach. Logo looks nice but I do not have the time to learn another language and it definitely looks "higher" than the algorithm-based level that I have wanted to show to my son.
I want Z=2x, x=1, print Z.
I want to move a DOT using a simple mathematicall algorithm. I have examples in books. Why can I not show this to my son? It is EXACTLY what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Wozniak did.
Maybe that's why they have ensured that no one else can.
For some reason I am tempted to launch a lament over the fact that students can't do simple arithmetic without an electronic calculator.
(Me? There have been times when I've brought my old "Pickett Plank" to class and raced the students to the answer . . . )
-- Ronn! :)
"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever." -- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy
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