Re:If-then-else had to be invented
by ksangeelee on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:32AM
(#25406781)
BBC Basic II does have ELSE, it just has to go on one line.
IF A=4 THEN PRINT "FOUR" ELSE PRINT "NOT FOUR"
Statements for the IF block and the ELSE block can be separated by ':'.
I was recently given a BBC Micro and it's a fascinatingly impressive machine, the hardware and software are so beautifully designed in tandem that it's quite awesome even in 2020.
ah yes you are right, the in-line ELSE
Obligatory shout out for 'Micro Men', about the making of the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM
Re:If-then-else had to be invented
by ksangeelee on Sunday December 13, 2020 @12:19PM
(#25408133)
For more geeky insights into the time, I can recommend the book The ZX Spectrum ULA http://www.zxdesign.info/book/ The business side of things is incidental to the rich details of the hardware design and production.
I started with BBC Basic II (on the Model B) which had IF..THEN but it was just one line and there was no ELSE. So if you wanted to make a 'block' you had to call a different PROC (thankfully there were PROCedures so you could avoid GOTO)
As such when I was introduced to ELSE and ENDIF with BBC BASIC V on the Archimedes it seemed like very welcome syntactic sugar - it let you do the same stuff but in a tidier way
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC