do you know? The Basic language is forty years old. Basic can be a long elder in the programming language compared to only the nine-year-old Java language and only three-year-old C # language. It is strange that some programmers have insisted that Basic is the most "naive" language in all languages. Is this not reversing black and white? If you come back, even if the Basic language is tender, it is also the maintenance of people, youth forever! Now, the supporters of the Basic family are spread all over the world (it is not only for one under the next). The future Basic language is not reasonable. In addition, there is no peerless martial arts; this is very simple: in the past forty years, Basic is almost full of vitality, such a healthy and lively, passionate language of course Will be big in the new century!
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In the 1960s, in the 1960s, it was an era of chaotic initial in the field. In that era, people who have written programs in advanced language are uncomfortable, and there are very few senior languages for choice. Fortran language, ALGOL language and COBOL language are cumbersome, and the Leisp language in thought advances is in good performance efficiency. From today's eyes, the college students in the 1960s and the college students designed in the 1960s are indeed unbearable.
In order to make the process of designing and learning programming more easily and enjoyable, early 1960s, the Dartmouth College J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz began to design a new language. They include design principles for this new language, including:
? Simple, as simple as possible
It is said that J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz, this kind of pursuit of simple design philosophy from Einstein's scientific philosophy. In the field of theoretical physics, Sinoa-based philosophy of Einstein and its pursuit of simple and elegant pursuits in theoretical studies have traveled. Today, we are difficult to judge, J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz have the deeper philosophy of Einstein when designing the Basic language; but there is no doubt that the two founders of the Basic language put love Stan's way of thinking has been to the extreme, they are abandoning the breeding, pursuing simple practices: the early Basic language is only 14 statements, but it can solve most of the calculations known at the time. Basic's concise contrast in grammar and the cumbersome of Fortran, Algol and COBOL languages.
? Like English, as far as possible
From the modern English, the keywords and grammar rules are not Basic's innovation, and the Fortran language has made a good appearance in this point. However, the Basic language designer is obviously more paying, which can even be reflected from the "Basic" language name. It is generally believed that the name of Basic is just a series of words, but a few researchers pointed out that the name of Basic seems to be related to the invention of C. K. Ogden. In 1930, in order to make non-English-speaking English learners faster, CK Ogden is invented by "simplified English" invented only 850 words and dozens of grammar rules, and named it. "Basic ENGLISH". Although this strange English did not become a global "world language" like CK Ogden, CK Ogden simplifies English to facilitate communication. In fact, it has contributed to today "Business English", " Modern English forms such as science and technology English are popular in the world. From this point, the Basic language in the field of program design is indeed a certain blood relationship with Basic English. This blood relationship is also popular with the popularity of Basic language - people designed for the first contact program. For example, the English grammar and English words in the Basic language look obviously more intimate than the laminated brackets in the Lisp language. In 1964, the Basic language was formally born. The official annotations given by J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz are: Basic is the abbreviation of "Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code". The first Basic language running environment is implemented by J. Kemeny, T. Kurtz and several students on the GE series computer and has become part of the Dartmouth College to the GE Series Computer Development.
From the grammatical characteristics, this new language inherits many advantages in the Fortran and Algol languages, and the appearance of the code is very close to the Fortran language. But in fact, most of the advanced languages in the past is that the Basic language is a "interactive" language. That is, most Basic language programs operate in an explanation, people do not need to prepare all of the code and submit to computer processing in the way of batch processing; when using the Basic language, we can be more comfortable and more human In the environment, only the code is typed, while observe the execution result of the code, and modify and improve the code at any time. The interactive feature of the Basic language is later learned from many interpretation languages and scripting languages. One of the most typical examples is that many implementations of the SmallTalk language (such as VisualWorks) not only inherit the basic characteristics of the Basic language interactive programming, but also more in one step, editing and running the language, class library, debugging interface, function The plugins are integrated in an integrated environment that can fully interact.
The new Basic language is first successful in teaching practice. Since 1964, J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz use the Basic language teaching program design course at the Dartmouth College. Students are extremely deeply impressed by this entry-type language. They think that mastering the Basic language is very easy. After mastering the Basic language, the high-level languages that work in Fortran are also relatively simple. It should be said that J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz design Basic's idea is mostly confirmed by later teaching practices. Soon, other institutions that open computer courses have successively incorporated the Basic language into a teaching plan, and researchers have also transplanted Basic language to several different computer systems in subsequent years. J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz are known in the Dartmouth College, is called Dartmouth Basic. In the subsequent decades, the two founders of the Basic language, and their colleagues and students have been optimized and improved for the grammatical characteristics of the language itself. Prior to 1983, Dartmouth Basic has developed seven versions. In J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz's eyes, the Basic language in 1964 is still far mature, and the BASIC is just a set of command sequences, which is also inserted with goto and gosub statements. From E. W. Dijkstra, the structured program design movement in the 1970s not only spawned a large number of structured programming languages such as PASCAL, but also indicated the direction for further development of Basic language. In 1971, Dartmouth Basic added a parameter, the external subroutine function that can be called, A. Luehrmann also implemented an interactive graphics library for Dartmouth Basic, which allows the Basic language to move forward on structured roads. . In 1976, Dartmouth Basic had a complete structured language rule for the first time. S. J. Garland On the basis of Dartmouth Basic, a SBASIC language fully compliant with structured programming (SBASIC is an abbreviation of "structured Basic"). From this year, when Dartmouth's students prepare the BASIC program, they no longer need the line number and goto statement. In 1979, Dartmouth Basic introduced the concept of "package" (sometimes known as "group"), which is a grammatical feature of the "package" structure similar to the ADA language. It can make the Basic language preliminary Data package capability.
In 1983, some students of the Dartmouth College persuaded J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz to turn the Dartmouth Basic language into a commercial software sales in the market. To this end, a company named TRUE Basic was formally established, and the product launched by the company was also called True Basic, which was actually evolved from Dartmouth Basic. The earliest True Basic can run on the IBM PC and Macintosh computers, which can perform BASIC code in an interpretation, and can also be compiled into a machine language to increase the operational speed. From the day of the advent, True Basic is a pure structured programming language. It has always adhered to the structured road in the subsequent version of the change, and has followed the Basic language. Minimaism spirit. Today, True Basic has developed many versions such as DOS, Macos, Windows, UNIX and Linux, and provides a rich function library such as graphics, sound, window operation, mathematical operation. And other mainstream programming languages are similar, and standardized organizations such as ANSI and ISO have also developed relevant standards for Basic language. This includes ANSI in 1978, ISO passed the "STANDARD for Minimal Basic" adopted in 1984, and ANSI in 1987, ISO passed the "complete Basic language standard" in 1991 (Standard for Full Basic) ). The main basis for developing Basic language standards when developing Basic language standards is Dartmouth Basic and TRUE Basic. In all Basic language products we can see today, the best natural natural language standard with ANSI and ISO is also true Basic - another subtext of this sentence is: Unfortunate, except for True Basic At present, other Basic languages on the market are almost far from ANSI and ISO standards.
Undoubtedly, True Basic and ANSI, ISO's Basic language standard representative of the "famous gantry" in the Basic language. But unfortunately, the "famous door is" has not achieved success in the market. As will be mentioned, in the 1970s, the Basic language started in the PC market, J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz were almost in the heart of ordinary programmer. When Microsoft sold Basic language as a "shake money tree" to almost all personal computer users, researchers will only accuse the market in the laboratory is some outdated rubbish; when QuickBasic, Turbo Basic When the Structured Basic language of Dartmouth is unimpeded in the market, True Basic can't grab 10% of market share; when Visual Basic, Vbscript and Visual Basic .NET wings are gradually The standards of ANSI and ISO have also been lost. Many people complain that Microsoft does not follow ANSI and ISO's Basic language standards, so that all kinds of Basic in the market cannot be unified, but few people ask a question. Why can't Dartmouth College, why can't I bring the "famous door" product to the market as soon as possible? Why always make advanced technology and advanced standards stagnant on paper? Why after Microsoft has become the fact that the facts of the facts have, we must adhere to the so-called "orthodox concept"?
Of course, I didn't pingerhand J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz and others lack the meaning of business mind. I just want to tell you that there is such a paradox in the history of the Basic language: On the one hand, the Basic language is in the field of computer, especially in the personal computer, rapid development; on the other hand, the implementation version of the Basic language is 10,000 different. Programmers are 衷衷 一. Perhaps, the Basic language is born to the pursuit of "simple" and the complexity of software systems in the realistic software system is a pair of eternal contradictions. When using practicalists such as Microsoft find similar contradictions, they will roughly modify the grammar rules and design philosophy of the Basic language, and use a new version of "simple" and "practical" to "famous". " issue a challenge. By the 1980s, this challenge has developed to the foundings of the Basic language to sit downally. In 1984, J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz published "Back to Basic - the history of language, the fall, and the future", and future of the language ", and in the book It is pointed out that all Basic other than the Dartmouth College has more or less from the original intention of the Basic language, they are all "street Basic", should "go home" as soon as possible. J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz's "home" of the Basic, of course, refer to orthodox Basic represented by TRUE Basic. In addition, in an article in 1999, T. Kurtz also turned the Basic name in Visual Basic in Visual Basic into the case of "Basic", which is dissatisfied. T. Kurtz believes that the word "Basic" written "Basic" is the abbreviation of "beginners General Symbol Directive Code" to reflect the original intention of the Basic language for beginners. J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz maintenance of orthodox Basic dignity is unable to, this is like a master of martial arts in the martial arts, always put on the left of the road. However, the market law is not one of the two sentences of "calling" to reverse: from the Basic ancestors, Basic is still in the past 20 years, the Basic language is getting farther in the road of "Wartture Street". In addition to let us have an unlimited sympathy of "famous door" in addition to let us have an unlimited sympathy?
Winner is king
Next, we may take a look, the Basic language that is considered J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz as "street prodigal sons" is how to flourish outside the Dartmouth College.
In the Basic world, Microsoft is the actual leader in the market and is also a unclosed pagan. Just like a few hundred years ago, the new teach rapidly in Europe and North America, the success of Microsoft in the Basic language market can also be summarized in the "potential, such as broken bamboo".
In 1975, the largest change in computer history - the storm of the PC has hosted. At this time, Microsoft's two founders, Paul Allen and Bill Gates have developed a Basic language interpreter for MITS, produced by MITS, which is also the first product of Microsoft. Today, when we came back, when we review the era of the talents, we didn't really find that the combination of personal computers and Basic languages is actually a helpless choice, because the personal computer computing ability is very limited. Can't run any complicated applications, and the syntax is simple, the interactive Basic language can meet the needs of PCs; on the other hand, it is the success of Bill Gates and Microsoft, which is the success of Pearls in PC and Basic language. It is probably because there is no big company that is willing to write the "simple" Basic interpretator, and the University has not graduated Bill Gates, of course, will not care about whether there is enough technical content. Thus, a Basic language interpreter that can run on the Altair 8800 computer, the Basic language interpreter has unveiled the prelude of Microsoft seizes the software market. Between 1975 and 1979, Microsoft put their own Basic language interpreter into TRS-80, Commodore, Atari and other personal computers. In 1977, when Apple's S. Wozniak designed Apple Computer, in order to make Apple computers also have a Basic language operation environment, I have developed an Integer Basic language that supports integration. Integer Basic is not as strong as the similar products of Microsoft. So, at the end of 1977, Microsoft and Apple jointly developed a Basic language interpreter called AppleSoft for Apple II. However, before 1979, the Built-in Basic language interpreter built in Apple is still in Integer Basic, and AppleSoft is only available in disk. In 1979, the famous Apple II Plus computer has been built into AppleSoft. As Apple II Plus is commercially successful, Microsoft provides a Basic language interpreter almost all personal computers on the market at the time.
In 1981, the emergence of IBM PC set off a new climax of personal computer development. As we all know, Microsoft provides disk operating system PC-DOS for IBM PC, and Microsoft also provides an exemplary operating system software with other PC compatible vendors with MS-DOS names. PC-DOS embeds a Basic language interpreter called Basica. Basica Represents "Advanced Basic", although it is not advanced, it does not have the characteristics of structured language. Similarly, MS-DOS also embedded a same BASIC interpreter, but the name turned GW-Basic (someone said GW is here "Gee Whiz" abbreviation, and some said GW actually represents Bill Gates. Name Gates William. It is worth noting that Basica and GW-Basic are free software bundled in the DOS system - do not say, this is also Microsoft's consistent "trick".
Basica and GWBasic are both unstructured languages, and the execution speed is not fast, but it has occupied the PC market with the DOS system. In 1982, Microsoft first solved the problem of slowing in the Basic language on the PC, and they developed a Basic language compiler Bascom 1.0 for IBM. In 1984, Apple launched the first personal computer Macintosh with a graphical interface. Microsoft also developed a Basic language interpreter dedicated to Macintosh computers MS-Basic 1.0 for Mac, including MS-Basic for Mac. It is also listed soon.
In 1985, the True Basic language reminded, Microsoft launched a fully structured Basic language - QuickBasic 1.0. QuickBasic has a powerful integrated development environment that includes both the interpretation of the BASIC code, and also includes compilation. There is slightly different from True Basic, and QuickBasic is more focused on the completeness and efficiency of language functions in design. As its name suggests that QuickBasic is almost the fastest Basic language in that era, but it has become a Basic language betrayal of "orthodox" Basic language. One of the reasons why Microsoft is T. Kurtz et al. . The final version of QuickBasic is the QuickBasic 4.5 released in 1988. Subsequently, in 1989, Microsoft launched two functions of the Basic development environment with a new name, ie Basic PDS (PDS represents "professional development system" version 7.0 and 7.1. In 1991, Microsoft bundled simplified version QBasic 1.0 for QuickBasic, including explanation functions in MS-DOS 5.0.
The winner is king. Microsoft has achieved unprecedented success in the Basic market, and naturally became the actual monographer of the market leader and Basic language standard. In Microsoft, people in the Dartmouth College are too pedmend, while ANSI and ISO's Basic language standards cannot be used for me. At this time, Microsoft can do with new Basic products to seize the market, and constantly according to their own The idea is transformed into the Basic language. Perhaps, it is difficult to understand the development of Microsoft's practice to the development of the Basic language. It is still more harmful, but from the market perspective, the victory is always right. In any case, from the 1980s, the Basic language has not returned along the direction of Microsoft.
In addition to Microsoft, the company has obtained successful companies in the Basic language market. Borland can be counted. If Borland has launched Turbo Basic, the Basic market is abandoned because of the company's internal reasons, Microsoft's later Visual Basic may not have a small view of the mountain. In 1987, the Turbo Basic 1.0 was successfully launched in the development tools. The prototype of Turbo Basic was Basic / Z developed by B. Zale 1980. Turbo Basic and QuickBasic are very similar to some functions. Unfortunately, in 1989, Borland released the product line after Turbo Basic 1.1. The final fate of Turbo Basic is that B. Zale recovered its own product and independently developed it into today's Powerbasic. Above
If Microsoft's GW-Basic and QuickBasic are only in business, but not introducing more new ideas for Basic language, then from Visual Basic to Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft is Basic language. The biggest contribution to it.
Visual Basic is the first rapid application development (RAD) tool that is successful in business. Its appearance is that the Windows operating system in 1985 was rapidly popular in the 1990s, and the demand for rapid graphical application development is increasingly strong. In 1987, A. Cooper and his colleagues wrote a prototype of visual development tool in Microsoft, which is the predecessor of Visual Basic. In 1991, Visual Basic 1.0 came out. Visual Basic integrates QuickBasic's grammatical features, compilation and A. Cooper visual development environment, allowing programmers to quickly complete development tasks in a graphical interface you have obtained. This is indeed a transformation of the "Coding-Compilation-Run" familiar to the past few decades.
In 1992, Microsoft also expressed the MS-DOS version of the Visual Basic 1.0 for the DOS operating system that still occupies a comparable market share. Similar to the Windows version, programmers can use the Mouse click and towards the DOS program based on an event-driven model, have a window and menu mechanism in VB. Soon, DOS quits the historical stage, this version of Visual Basic has also become the only visual development tools issued by Microsoft in the DOS environment.
In 1993, Microsoft released Visual Basic 3.0. This version of Visual Basic supports advanced features such as ODBC, OLE. The Visual Basic 4.0 released in 1995 not only supports 32-bit applications under Windows 95 systems, but also introduces the object-oriented concepts such as the class (Class) for Visual Basic. The Visual Basic 6.0 issued in 1998 is the last version of the VB to VB.NET and the most comprehensive version of the traditional Visual Basic, the most widely used version.
More shocking changes occurred in 2001 to 2002. Microsoft enters the .NET platform in an inconsistent with amazing courage, and also brought a lot of new technologies and new concepts that make people should pick up. Along with the .NET platform, Visual Basic has experienced a reborn revolution. In order to achieve the great idea of .NET's great ideas, Microsoft even let the new version of Visual Basic .NET abandoned with traditional VB programs. In Visual Basic .NET, we have seen a complete object-oriented feature, see the .NET style memory management and exception handling mechanism, see support for new technologies such as ASP.NET, Web Form, and Web Services, and regret It seems that the existing Visual Basic code must be changed to run on the .NET platform. The official Basic .NET officially released in 2002 allows the Basic language to have the first time with the C language, the Java language, so that the Basic language can fight side by side with the mainstream running environment of the industry, and let J. KEMENY and T. Kurtz were lost in the "simple to" spirit of "simple to" in the Basic language. Today, the Visual Basic .NET we have seen has become a mixture of various language characteristics. In this Microsoft hand-shaped giant body, there are both early Basic's simple appearance, and QuickBasic's practical style, both .NET The platform is omnipotent, and most of the object-oriented languages have complex language ... I don't know which style features of Microsoft will introduce Visual Basic .NET, I only know that the Basic language in Microsoft hands has become more and more difficult to reflect. The original connotation of "General Symbol Code".
Wind and rain rivers and lakes
Visual Basic .NET does not represent everything in the Basic language. In a sense, Microsoft has made efforts to VBScript language and its related technologies more than the development trend of Basic language.
Since 1993, Microsoft offers Office Software with a similar application development environment - Visual Basic for Applications. It is a subset of Visual Basic. From an application perspective, it provides Office users with a programmable method for customizing application software, we can see it as a predecessor of scripting Basic language. In 1995, in order to meet the application needs of the Internet and IE browser, the scripting language VBScript was officially born in order to develop competition with JavaScipt language.
The VBScript language makes the maximum simplification of Visual Basic, especially for the data type. This makes the VBScript language to some extent to J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz are more close to orthodox concepts. Most importantly, VBScript provides programmers to provide a simple scripting language than JavaScript, CSH, KSH, Perl, Python, and other scripting languages, and it is also easier for programmers. On the Windows platform, with Technical systems such as Microsoft ActiveX, ASP, programmers can quickly complete most of their daily tasks, including prototyping, file management, web applications, database access, etc. with VBScript language. Just like the popularization of the interactive development environment, the scripting language is gradually become another highlight of the development of the programming language in recent years. The VBScript language reduces the difficulty of the scripting language to the lowest point, which may indicate that the Basic language will have more active in the world of scripting languages. In addition, if you get out of the Basic Kingdom of Microsoft, we can still find a variety of vibrant Basic languages in many occasions: First, many commercial software (such as group system, workflow management system and data warehouse system) Both Basic or VBScript language as the preferred development environment; second, Powerbasic, Realbasic, Futurebasic, Omnibasic, etc. Numerous commercial software still keeps their positions around the Kingdom of Microsoft; again, with the booming of open source movements, WXBASIC, XBASIC, YABASIC, SMALLBASIC, BYWATER BASIC, etc. The Basic language interpreter and compiler provide the best resources for programmers to explore the potential of the Basic language ... Basic's rivers and lakes are still a lively scene of a wind transformation. Some said that this reflects the union and irregularity of the Basic language; but the confusion is not necessarily a bad thing. Who can assert that this chaotic cause is the kind of strong vitality of the Basic language?
? The world is big
"The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" said, "The world is big, the long-term must be combined, and theirs must be part." Today, Basic's situation is more subtle than the situation of the three national departments: On the one hand, Visual Basic .NET has become a factual Basic language standard in the Microsoft camp; on the other hand, outside the Microsoft Kingdom, an endless Basic variant It is also really difficult to pay.
Is the future Basic language need to be unified? What kind of way will the future Basic language will be unified? Can the founder of the Basic language see Basic's return to simple, elegant ideal state? Perhaps, we don't have to look for the answer to these questions; as long as the "old urchin" in the Basic design field can bring us happiness, we can always keep a child, we are very satisfied - why Let Basic bear too much responsibility and expectation?
