C
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I haven't programmed BASIC in any volume since 1979, but I thought I'd pass
this on. The new TrueBASIC appears to be shipping, or at least accepting
orders, for the Amiga. The basic package is about $150.00 (not bad) but in
order to create stand-alone programs, you'll need the stand-alone package, at
$500.00 (expensive beyond my tastes). This language appears to be one of the
bast designed BASICs around. It is incrementally compiled into a virtual
machine code they call b-code, so it runs much faster than an interpreted
BASIC (sound anything like COMAL?). It supports separately compiled modules
so that you can build up lobraries (libraries) of useful routines, some of
which they sell. Probably the best sounding clam is that TrueBASIC code is
100% portable from machine to machine. It currently will also run on the MAC
and the IBM PC. They achieve this by hiding implementation details on each
machine in their functions. Thus, when you open a window, you supply the
virtual size of it, and the window command takes care of scaling that to the
machine that its running on. The language also supports a large battery of
matrix functions, the likes of which I haven't seen this side of some of the
HP minicomputer BASICs. This language is very structured (not that
AmigaBASIC isn't). I haven't used it myself, but I thought that anyone out
there who's not quite satisfied with BASIC but doesn't want to learn C could
probably do some serious programming in TrueBASIC.