Aio

Basic programming language may have already advanced into modular to structured to object based to OOP, to whatever term you may use to modern and advanced programming methods, through Visual Basic and other newer Basic language packages. I have observed however that it can't get away from its trademark as being the language suited only for beginners. Probably -- just probably -- it's because the language itself is rooted from the purpose of being created for beginners. Much more, the name itself is "Basic" and the word "Beginner" even banners in that name.

Look at Fortran. The syntax of Basic and Fortran is probably 80% to 90% similar, yet, no one (or very rare is ever there is one) is labeling Fortran as a beginner's language. If you have tried programming in dBase, Foxbase, Foxpro, Clipper and/or Cobol, you could probably tell that these are more simple languages, yet, I haven't heard anyone labeling them as beginner's languages.

Pascal, because of its humble beginning as a teaching language, has not completely extinguished its character as a language suited only for students. Not until it became the language base (or a mere rename) of Modula, Delphi and/or Ada. That, despite the fact, that Pascal has nearly matched C in terms of power.

C on the other hand had its high profile beginning as "designed for systems programming", "tools for creating compilers" or, as one of the book I have read described it as "the language designed for real programmers." Some readers may react to this statement but I have seen and read several discussion boards on the choice C family (including C++). While it's always unanimous (and I agree that it's a valid concern) that the foremost reason is speed and power, I often observed as well that a strong reason is the "feeling smarter" doing in C than in Basic. Does it makes anyone smarter choosing a complex programming language than using a much simpler tools so as not to worry the complexity of that programming language?

The "first impressions last" adage seems have influenced much in the choice of a programming language.

Just a random thoughts.

reboot

Well said.

Banjo

I can guarantee that a C programmer won't look anywhere near as smart when he has to quote for 6 months work when a VB wielding competitor can quote for 3 months for the same product.

Aio

I think it's only Basic that suffers from this bad trademark. Did you have any other language in mind?

Bucky

Perhaps the name thing is why C# is so popular? I know that many people
who use C++ or Visual C++ will move to C# because it uses the .NET Framework, but of course it doesn't have
'Basic' in its name, so it may be "cooler" to use that VB.NET.
Although I see nothing basic about the full OOP capabilites of
VB.NET.

But against your point, I think that many programmers refer to
Visual Basic as 'VB', especially while speaking because it's three
syllables shorter, and so the "basic" part of it wouldn't come to
mind as much.

Just some ideas. I really like your points, Aio.

Robby

I think that the main goal of the developers of .NET was to ensure that C
folks would jump on C# and VB folks to VB.NET.

If VB.NET were named anything else, would any of us have picked it up?
By the same token would any C developer have jumped on C# if it were called A#?

And of course now there's J#, same thing.

chris00

C mean Clipper right ?¿?¿?