Dartmouth basic compared with arduino

Projects Programming
21

it is shorter. Yes. As long as your program stays within 10 to 15 lines you keep the overview.
If the program exceeds 15 lines things start to become difficult because you have to memorise what was
gosub 5 ?
gosub 47 ?
gosub 121 ?
gosub 239 ?
gosub 451 ?

RETURN (to where?)
RETURN (to where?)
RETURN (to where?)
RETURN (to where?)
RETURN (to where?)

Have you ever looked into any library how many lines such a library has?
With microcontrollers you use libraries all the time and they do all the low level stuff for you

But maybe you like

take a look into it

22

Perhaps not all. I once did a study of UCSD Pascal for a banking software project. I am sure it was interpreted.

23

Ah yes, the p-System was an early implementation. As I recall there was even a bit slice hardware implementation of p-code.

By the time I was teaching it it was compiled on the systems we used - the PC and IBM/360.

24

Pascal is token-compiled. There is some kind of interpreter but at least it's not interpreting text commands! It can be pretty small and fast, like Forth.

25

In a 1985 issue of Byte magazine Niklaus Wirth wrote an article on Modula 2. He began with the old programming adage I paraphrase;

If you want to make a program right, write it twice and throw the first one away.

And then he declared that Pascal was that first attempt and Modula was the second. I did literally LOL.

I had already skipped Pascal. I had helped some students fix their Pascal homework and what I saw was over-structuring to a degree that I thought was 'extremely retentive'. When I picked up credits in COBOL, it reminded me of Pascal.

26

it wouldn't work using arduino. you would get a list of errors.

27

7 posts were merged into an existing topic: Coding error in subroutine

28

Arduino is not hard to learn. I have made a lot of good sketches with it. But now all of a sudden I cannot get the subroutines to work. And the advice I am getting on how to fix the problem is not working. For instance I was advised to use in the return the type; 'int return' The type of return which I did not have in the first place. This still did not compile.
I will look up a few of my old working sketches to see if I used subroutines in any of them. This may be the only way. I am getting plenty of advice of what is the error in my sketch but nobody will give me a code that compiles.

Coding error in subroutine
Coding error in subroutine
32

I hear you. Time to give up on forcing Arduino to adopt an archaic language and enjoy the world of C/C++... practice functions here...

33

Well there is one "forum" that - if you pay for it - has infinite patience.
You can ask short questions, medium long questions, longer questions
you can present code-snippets, you can jump from detail to detail.

And this "forum" will always have answers. The patience is endless.
If you pay for it. It is a rather small fee. And I promise you the patience is really infinite.
It will allways give answers. Even code.

Are you willing to try it?

34

There is a pay to play section here?

36

There is a gigs and collaborations topic where money may be involved.

But consider where what you pay is attention and effort.

38

@petercl14 you are causing the discussion in this topic to overlap with that in your other topic (Coding error in subroutine). This is irresponsible because it can cause the helpers to waste time by unknowingly duplicating the efforts already made by others in the parallel topic.

Please be careful to avoid any further overlap. Each of the topics is on a distinct subject matter, so this should not be difficult. If they continue to converge then I will be forced to merge the two topics and that will not be in the best interest of anyone.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

39

When I was taught the C programming language, the tutor purposely didn't tell us about the existence of the 'goto' statement until after the exam.

It was just a quick " By the way, there is a 'goto' statement, but don't use it." type of mention.

40

my college professor said you fail if you use goto

it took some convincing for me to learn how it can be used appropriately to simplify some coding (i.e. exceptions)

41

My first C teacher was the same. Any assignment with a goto statement is an automatic zero.

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Only the p-code implementations.

43

I still have my hardcopy from school back in the mid-80s

2 Likes
44

BASIC can be fully interpreted from the user text, converted to bytecodes that are then interpreted, or fully compiled to binary code. I think there are AVR BASICs that do the first and the last (semi-compiling to bytecodes requires enough RAM to store the bytecodes.) (storing your BASIC program text in RAM is also problematic, and storing it in flash has "other" problems.)

BASCOM AVR - Compiler for BASIC on AVR (windows only - about $100)
Bunch of other BASICs for AVR

Getting those to work on an Uno should be "possible." I have no idea how functional or "easy to use" they are.

45

I have somewhere a Dontronics (Australian with super neat ideas but no longer operating) dev board for AT90S... MCU's that ran BASCOM BASIC. BASCOM is supposed to be 99% compatible with M$ QBasic.

Dontronics SIMMsticks.
SIMMsticks are boards based on SIMM memory cards that fit into SIMMbus holders. The old memory sticks and holders make fantastic buses.