Mattel IntelliVision II 5872 Manuel d'utilisateur télécharger pdf (Page 177)

_________________________________________________________________

Node:BASIC, Next:[1146]batbelt, Previous:[1147]baroque, Up:[1148]= B =

BASIC /bay'-sic/ n.

A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's

experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many

years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger

W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal

Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good

programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC:

as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of

regeneration." This is another case (like [1149]Pascal) of the

cascading [1150]lossage that happens when a language deliberately

designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can

write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily;

writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad

habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well.

This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so

common on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined

tens of thousands of potential wizards.

[1995: Some languages called `BASIC' aren't quite this nasty any more,

1 2 ... 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 ... 238 239

Mattel IntelliVision II 5872 Manuel d'utilisateur Page 177