Is there a programming language that is combination of Python and Basic?

[norseman]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:00:18 -0700, Mensanator wrote:
> 
...(snip)
> Pascal has GOTOs. People rarely used them, because even in the 1970s and 
> 80s they knew that unstructured gotos to arbitrary places was a terrible 
> idea.
> 

Even in primarily assembly only days that was true.

> GOTO in Pascal required that you defined a label in your code, then you 
> could jump to that label. You can't jump to arbitrary parts of the 
> program, only within the current procedure.
> 
===================================

"...only within the current procedure."   That was one of the "why 
Pascal didn't hang on" as long as it might have.  Another was it's COBAL 
structure in defining things. Just like today - the more typing the more 
errors, the longer to 'in service'.  Imitating Pascal's short jump only 
was Intel's lack of actual popularity among the Pro's of the day. Zilog 
had the better cpu, but Intel teamed with Gates, shoved interrupt only 
on everyone and the rest is history.  In fairness to Pascal, the 
enforcement of no "goto" helped force the mass of new programmers 
(desperately needed now that 'desktops' were here) to think about their 
strategy.  So did Ashton Tate's dBASE, which probably had more lines of 
code world wide in the first two years of its existence than any other 
(baring assembly) programming language in equal time. And no internet to 
help it. Every one who speaks bad of assembly has never had the 
satisfaction of truly feeling the power. ("'cause they got no proper 
background" - says the old man)  The power of assembly is simple - if 
the machine can do it, it's allowed.  No need to worry about "if the 
compiler will allow" or "work around that compiler bug" or "Oops - they 
changed the ...(compiler or interpreter) and now we start over".  The 
average programmer, who takes a moment to think it out, can out optimize 
all but the best commercial compilers. The meticulous individual can 
usually match or best the best commercials with fewer 'iterations' of 
review when using assembly.  Since one is already looking at the 
registers and addresses, self optimization is simple.

I still have my Z80 pre-assembler. It allows  Do, While, For and Loop 
along with If..Then..Else (and/or Elseif) statements in assembly 
programming. Z80 had both mandatory and full conditional  call, jump, 
return ... anywhere to/from in memory.  Intel's conditional jump forward 
was limited to 126 BYTES. Even with megabytes of memory. Worse than Pascal.
"full conditional" - On Zero, plus, minus, overflow, underflow and some 
I don't remember.  Most were 1byte commands. (Destination had to be 
added, but not return - the microcode took care of that.)
Oh - and TRUE = 0, FALSE != 0  (Zero is good - no error)

VisualBasic IS Microsoft's blend of Python and Basic. IMHO a bad blend.
I am currently in the process of "converting" (re-writing is a better 
term) the key VB programs to Python/Tkinter for the department. The 
primary vendor finally got smart and told us VB wasn't going to be in 
their next release. Python is in, VB is out.
Everybody jump up and shout HURRAH!    :)

Steve