I don't mind coding but Basic is the only language I'm qualified to handle.
Chris
Years ago a "professional" told me that BASIC was not a good programming language and I was wasting my time with it. This was the first computer language I learned and I loved it! So easy to write code and get immediate gratification that I had done it right. The so-called pro sniggered at my attempts at coding, claiming that BASIC had no structure and encouraged the writing of "spaghetti code" sprinkled liberally with GOTO instructions.
Apparently "real programmers" have no need for a GOTO instruction. I ignored him and several years later, when I could afford it, I bought a PC with BASIC "built in" and eventually "upgraded" to Microsoft FORTRAN and Microsoft Visual BASIC compilers. Microsoft VB was the first language that I encountered (outside of MACRO assembly) that worked with the Windows OS to implement event-driven code. Later I also purchased Microsoft Visual C, but never felt as comfortable with using that.
The early version of Microsoft FORTRAN was a company purchase for a job I was working on at the time. It was the only version available at the time that would compile FORTRAN-77 code that was 100% compatible with DEC PDP-11 minicomputers running RSX-11M OS. I had at my disposal one of those computer pros whose job it was to write the FORTRAN program to run on the IBM-compatible PC (actually a REAL IBM PC-AT) I was embedding in a scanning micro-densitometer used to digitize classified aerial reconnaissance film (second generation high-resolution copies of the originals). The company I worked with was a DEC shop and I got a lot of resistance for choosing the PC platform instead of the PDP-11 minicomputer for the embedded controller.
So this "pro" wrote all the code at his time-sharing video terminal, deigning to soil his hands on a PC. We ported the source to the IBM PC for compilation there, after I got my custom hardware interface to a Hewlett-Packard plane-mirror laser interferometer up and working. This company I worked for later folded and DEC went out of business, but AFAIK the Mann-Data Micro Densitometer our three-man team put together still works. Of course now all overhead reconnaissance is being done with digital imagery instead of film, so it's probably been sold for scrap by now.
If I had had more cojones at the time, I would have
required Mr. FORTRAN Pro to write the code in Visual BASIC, but this was a DEC shop and I barely was able to convince management that an IBM PC-AT was adequate for the job. Trying to push Visual BASIC onto the software "pro" would probably have cost me my job. This guy did everything he could to break the Microsoft FORTRAN compiler, but it performed just like the DEC compiler and he eventually gave up trying to break it and wrote some pretty decent code. Of course I had to write the hardware interface code in Microsoft MACRO assembly, but that was pretty simple IMHO.
So, yeah, Chris... BASIC is fine! If you haven't already, try to score a copy of VB 6 before it disappears from Planet Earth.
Hop