Basic

Zion,

After reading your post I decided to check your age. I found that you're not even 20 so you're unfamiliar with how programming used to be.

Back when computers had only 1MB of memory, programmers had to make sure that their programs did not exceed 640K. And even with this limit many good programs and games were written. At the time, whole operating systems used to be on one floppy disc. If you make a Windows bootup disk, you'll find that the entire DOS operating system is stored on the disk with room to spare. If you examine the individul files, you will find the entire DOS operating system takes up only 300K. I dare you to try to find a program today that takes up 300K or less. Today Windows takes up hundreds of MB's. It is not 10, or 100 times larger than DOS, it is 1000 times larger than DOS. Think about that.

While Microsoft was making these dinosaur-ware operating systems, it also decided to make Visual C and Visual Basic so that other people can make dinosaur-ware too.

I would recommend that you study assembler so that you can truly find out how many commands it would take to make a window or a simple program like notepad. You will find out that it takes far fewer code than you think. You will then ask yourself why programs today are so large, just like I did.

I used to have an Atari ST when I was younger. The Atari ST had it's entire OS in ROM. It's OS was not command-line it was GUI, and it resembled Windows.

I'ts funny how you give so much credit to Microsoft for its "fancy" windows. If I recall correctly, Microsoft stole Windows from Apple, while Apple stole it from Xerox. And this was back in the 1970's. Why don't you call Xerox and ask them how much code, inovative techniques, and slip arounds it took them to make a window?

Finally, I do not use GOTO as often as you believe I do. I use it very infrequently, but sometimes it is the best command for the job(usually to exit multiple loops).

It scares me to think that many young programmers today believe that programs must be big and slow. This is not the case.

Tom

 

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Well first of all,in this age of commerce there is no such thing as elder or younger people,there are only customers,there are only people of want to buy,and what is important here is what he wants.the point here is the Age.Age?do you think is it a factor?

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About Windows,well first of all,yeah,it takes a hell lot of space,but tell me something Joe,what has changed for windows...it has the same basic structure,same booting process.
same bootup sequences,but there is a marked difference,there is something called GUI added to it,obviously it requires a loads of space.

and BTW,I know assembly language.thats why I said that when you compare Assembly with Basic its big mistake.and being an active C programmer for such a long time ,naturally enhances my capabilities as an asm programmer,as used in form of C pearls etc.

Bigger programs?
are we talking about bigger larger source codes?then le'me tell you this,just compare a hello world program in asm,and then write it in C.

i often wonder why do people underestimate Microsoft programmers so much?Microsoft has been the forerunner in the software development providing it to millions of homes.And Unix,well its only now they have opened up the can...

bye!

 

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Making me that old doesnt imply that i"ll not look back through pages of history,did you read my posts at windows and Dos?i am sure i know a little about Dos at least historically.

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Zion,

I apologize if I offended you. I figured since you were young that you were unfamiliar with the history of programming. It's just that today many young programmers are using programs like Visual C and Visual Basic that basically do everything for them so they really don't need to know about DOS or Asm.

Since you are familiar with DOS you realize how wrong you are about Microsoft requiring alot of code to make a GUI. If I were to tell you to write a program with a GUI in DOS, how many lines of code would you need? Here's an estimate:

Create a plain window:

Four lines of code to make a square, two to three more lines of code to make it resizable with your mouse.


Top window bar with text:

Two to Three lines of code.


Close, Restore, and Minimize Buttons:

10 lines of code(including functions to close, minimize and restore)


Menu:

7 lines of code


Pull down menus with data:

30-40 lines of code



Total: 50-60 lines of code to make a skeleton GUI.

Now you just link the buttons of the mouse and the location of the mouse's arrow on the screen with functions in your program and you have a complete program with a GUI. (Please inform me if my calculations are wrong)


Now let me tell you something about Macrosoft. It's well known for two things : DOS and Windows. The first it bought, the second it stole.

Tom

 

Agreeable.

But it also stole DOS,isnt it?(well a kind of legal stealing

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) from Tim Patterson who made CPM/80
or something,bought or purchased the whole thing from him for about a net sum of 50,000$ including other rights,from Seattle products,if i were Tim,i would have commited suicide by now.

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may be he has already.

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bye!

 

PS: i AGREE on VB point.i dont call VB guys programmers,they are just End users,just that.



bye!