Get Programming Pizazz While Getting Back To Basics

September 13, 1986|By Brian Starfire, Dallas Morning News

Most readers who program computers for the fun of it are familiar with BASIC, arguably the most popular programming language used on personal computers.

BASIC gained popularity among the micro set for a number of reasons: It is simple to understand, flexible, and offered as standard fare with a large number of computers. But it has its limitations.

BASIC invites ''unstructured programming'' (a nice term for programming in a haphazard fashion).

The BASIC that's supplied with many computers (an ''interpreted'' version designed by Microsoft) is not known for blinding speed. And the standard version that comes on many discs won't let you legally create a program that you can pass along to a friend or sell as a product, unless the person who uses the program also owns a copy of BASIC.

For these and other reasons, BASIC has been falling out of favor lately, passed by in favor of more sophisticated languages like Pascal and Modula-2. Nevertheless, every so often, a new BASIC package reaches the market, with its designers hoping to gain a following by curing the ills of the older, standard BASICs.

Such packages have not met with a great deal of success, and I would theorize that a big reason is the cost. PC programmers at large aren't about to pay hundreds of dollars to replace an outmoded language, when they can learn to program with something like Borland's Turbo Pascal for $50 or so.

I've had a chance to look at the first package that might bring back life to BASIC, because the product not only cures the ills of the original Microsoft BASIC, it also won't cost you your firstborn child. Microsoft has released QuickBASIC, a BASIC program list priced at $99, which runs at blinding speeds and creates ''compiled'' programs.

I will skip a long and tedious explanation about differences between ''interpreted'' and ''compiled'' and simply say that you can legally give away or market compiled programs that are ready-to-run. Compiled programs also run up to 10 times faster than programs written in the original, interpreted BASIC.

QuickBASIC puts all of today's flashy technology back into BASIC. The program offers a built-in word processor with multiple color windows that lets you edit programs in one window and run them in another. If you're familiar with the older BASICs, you know about line numbers, those numbers next to every line in the program that helps BASIC keep track of where it is.

This new BASIC does not need line numbers, but you can use them if you prefer to do so. The features common in the world of ''structured'' (or, non- sloppy) programming are provided with QuickBASIC.

The feature I was most impressed with is its ability to use BASIC programs that were written for the old Microsoft BASIC. Unlike some newer BASICs, you won't have to rewrite all of your programs to use this BASIC.

If BASIC programming is your cup of tea, and you're still fighting the limits of the old Microsoft BASIC, it's past time to trade in your programming software.

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