We’ve come a long way

This is a bit of a reflective post. I love programming in C# – it has so many features, the documentation is abundant and there are so many code samples to help you find a way to do almost anything (I *will* get it to make my coffee some day!). I go back to programming in Visual FoxPro quite regularly and, despite some quite intricate features that we’ve built in over the years, it just feels a little old school.

…but then I’ve started programming for a portable scanner in BASIC. No variable scoping, no user defined functions, no passing parameters (GOSUB and GOTO *shudder*) and all the code is in one file – 5000 lines and not even a procedure list for bookmarks. The compiler is buggy in a way that only just seems familiar – when was the last time you had to rearrange an if-then-else statement to get it to work properly?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m actually enjoying the challenge but it just makes you really appreciate how good we’ve got it now.

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