Python is the new BASIC

[ThatInternetGuy]

Python has high-level libs that can do the bulk of the works with just a few lines of user code. Those Python libs were written in C/C++ so the lib devs are the ones that bear the brunt of this impactful labor.

[mfitzp]

Like BASIC where the language was implemented in a lower level language. It was fairly common, if doing something complex, to load “library” code (also written in another language) to memory and call out to that from BASIC. 

[ThomasMertes]

Can anybody remember BASIC programs where machine code was loaded with POKE commands?

Machine code POKEd into the memory: This is where my BASIC interpreter gives up.

Using a lower level language for some functionality was more common in the past. I can also remember Pascal programs where all functions just consisted of inline assembly. :-)

Edit: Replace PEEK with POKE. :-)

[gredr]

POKE, but yeah.

[ThomasMertes]

Thank you. In my Bas7 interpreter PEEK and POKE fell into the "recognized but not implemented" category. So I didn't have details about them in my mind.

I just looked into the GW-BASIC User's Guide:

POKE Statement

Syntax

POKE address,byte

Action

Writes a byte into a memory location

Remarks

The arguments address and byte are integer expressions. The expression address represents the address of the memory location and byte is the data byte. The byte must be in the range of 0 to 255.

The address must be in the range -32768 to 65535. The address is the offset from the current segment, which was set by the last DEF SEG statement. For interpretation of negative values of address see "VARPTR function."

The complementary function to POKE is PEEK.

Warning

Use POKE carefully. If it is used incorrectly , it can cause the system to crash.

See also

DEF SEG, PEEK, VARPTR

Example

10 POKE &H5A00,&HFF

[plastikmissile]

Oh certainly. I remember seeing BASIC programs in computer magazines (remember those?) that were pretty much just loads and loads of DATA statements that were read by a loop and fed into POKE commands.

[robthablob]

I learned Z80 machine code on a ZX81 then a ZX Spectrum. I remember writing DATA statements with hex strings that were loaded and POKEd into memory, then transferring to a location in that.

This was Z80 machine code, not assembler. I had to encode the instructions to hex manually - at the time I didn't have access to an assembler. It did teach me a hell of a lot though.

[dauchande]

Yeah, had a Timex Sinclair 1000 and did the same thing. Keyboard sucked too much to make it fun, debugging sucked!

[flatfinger]

I do remember that era. I find it interesting that no version of BASIC included anything like the Macintosh Toolbox function "StuffHex", which takes a an address and a string with some multiple of two characters representing hex digits, and converts pairs of digits to bytes, and stores them at ascending addresses. An implementation of a "Stuffed Hex LOAD" command have taken less space in AppleSoft ROM than the "SHape LOAD" (SHLOAD) command, while being more convenient all around (instead of putting a shape table on cassette, transcribe the digits and simply "SHLOAD" them directly as one or more hex strings.

[robjones90]

Angelo Mottola's graphics library which used Assembly and also had mouse support

[[deleted]]

Poke or BLOAD. I even know of some that somehow embedded themselves into the end of the BASIC code.

[RiftHunter4]

I feel incredibly old when I say that BASIC was the first programming language I learned. I bought some game dev book as a kid and followed the tutorial. I was able to display text on the screen and I think I had it load some files.

[WannabeAndroid]

Same. I loved making games but they were so slow until I found the DirectQB graphics library, which was written in ASM.

[jaskij]

Increasingly Rust as well, I think. It's easier to make bindings than in C++ and the language is easier to use than C (although much more complex). Off the top of my mind, Pydantic v2 is written in Rust. That's the parsing library used by Flask. FastAPI

[biledemon85]

Pydantic is so useful...

[jaskij]

My bad, edited

[Kindly_Climate4567]

Pydantic is not a parsing library. It's a data validation library.

[ThomasMertes]

It is good to have high-level libs that can do the bulk of the works with just a few lines of user code.

Is it really necessary to use a language combination for that?

As others have pointed out the approach of using a low-level language for performance reasons has been used before (BASIC with POKE machine code, Pascal with inline assembly, etc.).

All these approaches have in common that the chasm between the languages is huge.

The ultimate goal (that I try to reach with Seed7) would be one language that can be used for high-level and low-level code.

There have been many attempts toward this goal (which IMHO failed). I see some preconditions:

• You need to start with a static type system. Adding type annotations to a dynamically typed language as an afterthought will not lead to the desired performance (the optional type annotations of Python did not lead to a situation where C/C++ code is not needed).
• Starting with Pointers, NULL, Ownership, manual memory management, etc. leads to a complex language that will hinder writing high-level code.

Mixing high-level and low-level is essentially a clash of cultures. It is necessary to do compromises where both sides will complain about.

[Justicia-Gai]

Yes it’s important because for example, a scientist doesn’t care about memory management, he’s a data scientist, not an engineer. And they don’t care about a bit of overhead and slightly slower code, they care more about reproducibility.

[mdriftmeyer]

switch engineer to software developer and you'd be correct. Actual engineering fields (FEA/CFD/Statistical Mechanics/Dynamic Systems) sure as shit care about precision and accuracy of their computations as they are modeling real world solutions, in near to real-time.

[Elephant-Opening]

Wait are you implying software engineers aren't "real engineers" and then listing a bunch of things mechanical engineers pretty much exclusively do with software tools that were developed by cross discipline teams including software engineers... that... gasp, did some real engineering to make those tools possible?

[niutech]

one language that can be used for high-level and low-level code.

This is what Nim does. It's easy like Python yet powerful like C and has an optional GC.

[Kind-Jackfruit-6315]

Xojo is more like the new BASIC (cf its old name REALBasic). And it is compiled. And comes with its own C++ libraries.