Re: Rowly's wit and wisdom on the MOS 6502 vs Zilog Z80

nigel wrote:
x-no-archive: yes

T h ë M u n t d r ë g g ë r wrote:

Luckily, I got to crank mostly spaggitti cobol full of goto's,
variables named
Tom *** and Harry and 2 digit year calcs.

What's the best language for reading in data, kicking it around a bit
and stuffing it somewhere - a purpose build language like COBOL or one
intended for switching lightbulbs on and off like the 'C' family? The
latter, obviously!

Wouldn't recommend Cobol. The latter is an archaic clumsy and pretty
much dreadful language to do anything in. The only reason
anyone still uses it is to maintain the huge legacy code base.

Although 'C' is good for system level programming, it makes a fair
language to do just about anything in. However, its not 'strongly
typed', ie its not fussy on its syntax, which makes it a bit of a
bugfest for anyone starting to use it. And forget entirely about
C++, its a complete bitch.

Don't bother with Java either. Its a C alike language without
pointers.

You can accomplish a suprising amount in Basic. A hidden gem on
windows is vbscript which is a vb/vba alike interpreter. Friends
of mine still use the old QuickBasic interpreter that used to
come with DOS but is public domain now.

Pascal makes an interesting language for maths and Delphi can
be downloaded free for non commercial use.

Wolfram Mathmatica is often the language of choice for maths research.
you might want to take a look at that. However, its a bit specailised
and I believe quite expensive.

Excel makes a halfway reasonable tool if you can use VBA. But it aint
great where sifting large data sets are concerned. For that you need
something like MS Access,

After writing in COBOL, writing data manipulation programs in the 'C'
family is a nightmare - why use a one-line command when ten lines
will do?

lol, you've never heard of the obfuscated 'C' competition.

http://www.de.ioccc.org/main.html

Its all about who can write the longest most complex program on *one* line.
In 'C' its possible to write a whole functioning Basic Interpreter on just
*one*
line, although admittedly a very long one. Coders only break down code
into multiple lines to reduce obfuscation and aid documentation. Its
particularly necessary in 'C' because its highly symbolic, as opposed
to Basic which is verbose.

As for GOTOs, they're okay when used properly - the compiled machine
code has them all over the place. And bad programming practices occur
in every language, perhaps even moreso in 'write only' languages like
the 'C' family.

In high level languages, goto's are a complete no no. Trying to maintain
spaggetti code (code infested with goto's) is a nightmare. However, at
machine level, goto's are pretty much unavoidable for obvious reasons.

The early part of my career was spent programming COBOL, and the
projects I was involved with never had the cost over-runs and high
profile failures that are so commonplace nowadays.

Ditto me, I used to crank cobol, but the complexity of programming
in those days bares no resemblance to modern day challenges.

Oh, and don't even ask about fortran Grrrrr !!!

If you want some real interlectual programming fun (as opposed to
pure code thrils) check out Prolog. I think you'll love it

--
Munty


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