| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 47.1 | | ELUDOM::ARSENAULT | | Wed Nov 28 1984 14:09 | 4 |
| That's easy. BASIC is a much smaller language than Ada. All other things
being equal, smaller is better.
mark
|
| 47.2 | | PIPA::JANZEN | | Wed Nov 28 1984 15:03 | 3 |
| That's true. i once was in the same room as the man that wrote the 4K
BASIC for Radio Shack TRS80 Model I.
Tom
|
| 47.3 | | PIPA::JANZEN | | Wed Nov 28 1984 15:20 | 16 |
| The Ada spec has gone to Mark Arsenault for his brilliant observation.
Just the other day, my brother was saying that Ada would probably require
50 diskettes on his Heath/Zenith micro. Pascal needs about 2 or 3, and
the different compiler passes are run by separate programs to do different
things, because the whole program won't fit on one diskette.
This is the reason there is no panacea, universal language. Like hardware
technology, software technology sports an ever-increasing repetoire of
tools. Each language has its place, it purpose, its most efficient
applications.
Even Ada must be good for something?
Oh yes: maintenance.
Tom
|
| 47.4 | | ORPHAN::BRETT | | Wed Nov 28 1984 17:44 | 5 |
|
Sorry, if Pascal is 2-3 floppies, there is no reason why Ada should be more
than 20. Our VAX Ada compiler is lss than 4xVAX Pascal.
/Bevin
|
| 47.6 | | TURTLE::GILBERT | | Wed Nov 28 1984 19:39 | 12 |
| re.-1: I suspect that may be a reflection on VAX Pascal.
ADA.EXE is about 2800 blocks. At 500 blocks/floppy, that's 6 floppies.
I didn't look at the sizes of various shareable images used by ADA at
compile-time or run-time.
Various other advantages of BASIC over ADA are: available implementations (size,
compile/run-time performance, various vendor extensions to BASIC), simplicity,
approachability (ease of learning), and available programmers.
Either the T-shirt (or whatever it was) has already been given away, or they
just didn't intend it as an honest offer.
|
| 47.7 | | PIPA::JANZEN | | Fri Nov 30 1984 08:34 | 2 |
| How do I get Ada.exe and a manual?
Tom
|
| 47.8 | | ADVAX::A_VESPER | | Fri Nov 30 1984 08:43 | 7 |
| Although I am too late for the prize, one BIG advantage to BASIC
over Ada is that BASIC is often presented as an interpreter. This
is a big advantage to beginning students as they typically make one
small change and run it again. On PDP-11's, compiling can be fast but
task building is usually quite slow.
Andy V
|
| 47.9 | | BISTRO::MONAHAN | | Fri Feb 08 1985 12:30 | 5 |
| .-1 is certainly true. I wrote a FOCAL interpreter, and then
translated the standard Whetstone benchmark from FORTRAN to
FOCAL. The interpreter could finish the standard run in less time
than FORTRAN took to compile and link. Of course, if you wanted
to run it more than once ....
|
| 47.10 | | REX::MERRILL | | Sat Feb 16 1985 10:26 | 7 |
| .9 - ahem! FOCAL-8 in a PDP-8 SIMULATOR on a CDC6600 ran FASTER
than the CDC "native mode" "desk calculator".
FOCAL-8080 reportedly runs faster than Basic Compiler - probably
takes up a heck of lot less memory too!
Mr. Focal
|
| 47.11 | | REX::MINOW | | Thu Feb 21 1985 16:32 | 3 |
| Just to muddy the waters, it it a little known fact that the original
Dartmouth Basic was a compiler.
|
| 47.12 | | LATOUR::AMARTIN | | Fri Feb 22 1985 01:21 | 6 |
| There's a good interview of Kemeny and/or Kurtz in the first issue
of "Computer Language(s)". There are two magazines with almost the
same title, this is the one which only started publishing less than
a year ago. The MR library carries it if you can't find it on-site.
Sigh. I guess I'll go find out the correct title, etc.
/AHM
|