Date   : Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:21:14 +0000
From   : jgh@... (J.G.Harston)
Subject: Granny's Garden

Kris Adcock wrote:
> I meant to pass this link around t'other week, but I've been dying of
> man-flu:

Bleugh. I've been throwing off a cold myself for the last few days.

> I was quite shocked to discover that the code is really quite 
> dreadful!

Just because a language /allows/ you to write like crap doesn't mean 
the /language/ is crap. I've seen some quite horrendous C code.

> But I was just wondering: were FNs and multi-line IFs only added to
> later versions of BASIC?

No, PROCs and FNs existed from the start of BBC BASIC version 0 (System 
New BASIC, the development version of BBC BASIC 1 - 
http://mdfs.net/Software/BBCBasic/6502 ). Also, you don't always need 
multi-line IFs, IF x THEN PROCy accomplishes it just as well.

> This might explain some of the programmer's
> choices ... or was it just that he didn't know about them?

Or maybe he was just a crap spaghetti programmer. I was certainly 
writing better laid-out and structured BBC BASIC code back in 1985 or 
so.

> So far I'm resisting the urge to rewrite it all. I think after thirty
> years, that ship has sailed. :)

I've been going through more of my Micro User cover disks archiving 
them, and as I do I test all the programs to check they work as some had 
mistakes that were corrected in a later magazine which I'm integrating 
back into the original. Some of the code is horrendous. 
http://mdfs.net/Mirror/Archive/MU

-- 
J.G.Harston - jgh@...      - mdfs.net