Is there a good BASIC compiler for ubuntu?

[Eric Dunbar]

> Take a look at Gambas. It's very similar to VB in many ways. It's
> available for Ubuntu. There have been some tutorials on it in one of the
> recent Linux magazines, but I can't remember which one.
>
> If you are already familiar with VB it is probably the best way to learn
> to program on Linux. If you haven't already committed to Basic then
> Python, as suggested by others, is probably a better starting point if
> you intend to learn serious Linux programming. If you just want to put
> together simple utility programs for your own use then Gambas is quite
> possibly the right choice.

Is Python transferrable to other operating systems?

It seems to me that for basic programming BASIC is an admirable
solution. I've seem some pretty impressive programs written in BASIC,
and, for simple data manipulation it can't be beat (if you already
know the language).

Just because programming snobs don't like it doesn't mean that people
shouldn't be using it.

I'm sure there are plenty of other languages out there that are now as
easy to use as BASIC, but, the advantage to using BASIC is that if you
learned how to program in the language 15 years ago (as I did) and you
never needed to learn another language (I stopped at BASIC & Pascal),
then you _still_ know how to use it.

The other problem with advocating for Python or JAVA is that they
don't seem to have particularly good (i.e. basic & easy to use)
interpreters. JAVA is a sluggish language and I've only ever seen
Linux geeks extolling the virtues of Python.

If I had to do something which required data manipulation that I
couldn't easily do in SAS, or if I didn't have SAS available to me,
then I'd fire up a BASIC interpreter since I still know the language
(since I don't earn my keep by programming I see no reason to devote
brain cells to learning aother language... I started on C a few years
ago and didn't find the exercise particularly useful... learning Bash
scripting was more useful ;-).

Eric.