Re: basic BASIC question

On 2/6/2025 4:13 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 6 Feb 2025 09:50:21 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

Small code bases, frequent releases and high user tolerance for small
ooopses favor a language like JavaScript. Ada would not work well in
this context from a business perspective.

 JavaScript is also a dynamic language, unlike Ada. Maybe not as dynamic as
Python, but still lets you do a lot in quite compact code.
 I’m not sure I agree with the “tolerance for small ooopses”. There is a
thing called “use strict”, which helps catch common JavaScript errors. It
is even enforced in new-style modules.

If a web page gives an error, then users try to ignore it, try
with another browser and worst case just try again next day - and
nobody is really surprised. If airplane control software has an
error that cause a crash and kill hundreds of people, then it
makes world wide headlines.

Code bases are not small anymore though. And TypeScript has taken huge
chunks of market share from JavaScript in recent years.

 TypeScript is just an attempt to add static typing to JavaScript. Maybe it
works for native-side code bases (i.e. not in a browser sandbox).

I don't think the word *just* in "just an attempt to add static
typing" is a fair description.
It does add optional static typing, but that enables a lot
of things that impact how code is written: different way
to do OO, generics, enum etc.. It is a significant change.
Arne