BASIC programmers never created these levels of horror.
@icedquinn Too bad the modern dialects of BASIC are way too verbose for my liking. Just look at these FreeBASIC examples on Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBASIC#Example_code
Who the fuck capitalizes statements?
think its optional but i dun use freebasic.
@icedquinn Still I don't like how you have to write:
Dim x As Integer;
Instead of:
int x;
Or writing "Then" after if statements or using "End If", "End While", "End Sub" instead of closing braces. I think modern scripting languages got it right by using a C-like syntax.
Though I think FreeBASIC is still interesting given that it has a built-in graphics library which can make it ideal for hobbyist game development.
being able to drop variables anywhere is questionable since the compiler is going to pool those up to the start of a block anyway, and now you have to contend with a bunch of variable declarations in the middle of large functions.
i have a module to detangle sometime which mixed a bunch of function calls and variable decs in the middle of it. it was neat for getting the prototype off the ground but it can't stay this way.
@icedquinn Pascal was before my time (Born 1998, started programming around 2011). I do avoid mixing declarations and actual code. That's common practice. I just don't like the verbosity of BASIC. That's probably because it actually preceded C by almost a decade.
later stuff like smalltalk and ada were also focused on legibility.
C is a write only language that won out because you could get free compilers and hacker culture doesn't value things like "doesn't crash" and "doesn't waste everyone's time"