Re: Programming Languages, "to C or not to C, that is the Q."

[David Corking <lists@dcorking.com>]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, Ron Johnson wrote:

> > You can't write '15 PRINT "Hello"' and expect your source code to
> > be automatically edited in any of the above!  Better to use a real
> > editor if you want to keep your code.

> You can, in Python!
> >>> print 'Hello'
> Hello

Ron, I think you misunderstood me.  However my point was purely of
historical interest, in reply to a nostalgic posting.

Those who experienced BASIC in the 70s and early 80s may recall that
the line I quoted was not executed immediately, but was instead
inserted between line 10 and line 20 in your source code.  This was a
poor substitute for a full screen editor, but generally necessary.

Of course the big payoffs in interactive execution are testing,
debugging, and immediate effects.  As your example shows, Ron, many
modern interactive tools like Python, Scheme and bash do all this very
effectively.

Best regards, David