On Mar 28, 2008, at 7:25 PM, Dr Skip wrote:

> If he spent all of his time doing things in basic, even writing  
> shareware type things, in 6 yrs would it be something to be proud  
> of professionally, or would a hiring company consider it hobby-ish?

Keep in mind that pretty much *my* entire career has been spent  
coding in Fortran, Assembly, and C...

My impression is that there is a significant chunk of 'real  
programming' done today in assorted flavors of basic.  Look at the  
success of the Parallax Basic Stamp, for example, or even the Basic52  
chip that is still sold.  And I think you can write "serious" windows  
apps in VBasic and similar.  It supports the sort of UIs and  
applications that windows users expect to see.  Moreover, other  
languages used for generating windows programs have significant  
similarities.

Now, that said, there is a big difference between one of the Visual  
Basics and Stamp Basic, so if you can write programs in both I'd say  
you know at least two languages.

As a prospective employer, I'd say that I would NOT be terribly  
impressed by someone who had been programming for 6years and only  
knew basic.  I expect a GOOD programmer to have learned principles  
that they can apply in several languages, and in fact I consider the  
principles and the methodology to be the important factor, rather  
than the language.  That implies having enough exposure to multiple  
languages to be able to fact out the common elements.   (And I've  
helped to hire people whose job would be to program in a language  
they had not used much, and been hired myself in a similar  
situation.  At some point, understanding the PROBLEM is more  
important than understanding the tools.)  (This is one of the reasons  
that learning assembly language at some point is so important, IMO.   
Since you immediately lose portability, you are forced to notice the  
similarities and differences of different CPUs.)

You've seen the way PICList members sneer at BASIC compilers for PIC  
(while others defend it...)

I think one of the Basics would be a fine starting point, but should  
be expected to be all you need to know to get a job...

BillW


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