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The problem with Minix is that it's trying to be an educational OS and a server OS and a tiny embedded microkernel and a user-friendly OS aimed at children.

Which isn't to say that it's not handy -- I've studied and used Minix myself -- but it's not as dedicated to being an educational OS as is Fiwix.

*cough*BASIC*cough*

I'd like to see so-called educational systems/languages/platforms put under a license which prohibits end use in production environments. I spent entirely too much time unlearning what BASIC taught me about programming.

BASIC rocks :-) I use it to learn my girlfriend some programming. When she has grasped the basics of if then constructs, functions, variables, do while loops, switch statements and so on then I will teach her some C++.

I guess you only learned GWBASIC, but better and more modern dialects such as QuickBASIC or, much better, FreeBASIC do away with the hated goto statement :-)

FreeBASIC really is a nice language to learn for newcomers. C-like syntax is an obstacle for people who never have programmed before.

Why use BASIC for learning when you can teach programming using Python?

I learned programming with BASIC when I was an 8-y.o. child playing with the VIC-20 (and later with QuickBASIC on DOS), but it just was because of necessity. I wasn't aware of many other languages at the times.

Now I wouldn't touch BASIC even with a stick. I'd teach programming with Python, Ruby or some similar language.

Why use BASIC for learning when you can teach programming using Python?

I learned programming with BASIC when I was an 8-y.o. child playing with the VIC-20 (and later with QuickBASIC on DOS), but it just was because of necessity. I wasn't aware of many other languages at the times.

Now I wouldn't touch BASIC even with a stick. I'd teach programming with Python, Ruby or some similar language."

Snobbery towards the Basic language is laughable.

Basic is what it is - an easy learning and macro and desktop (and sometimes even large systems) development language.

Lot's of smart people, who aren't necessarily hard core programmers, but might be, use Basic for everything from Excel macros to full data collection warehouse management systems.

And believe me, I'm the first person to poo poo on things MS, but let's face it, Visual Basic was one of the major building blocks for building MS's empire.

Basic makes people of varying degrees of skill and knowledge productive, and teaches basic programming constructs.

Those are good things.

Now that said, I prefer stuff like Java, Python, C++, even C#. In many ways, those are much more powerful languages that can be used to build more powerful programs.

But Basic most definitely has it's place.

Yup!

I never understood why folks balked at designers empowering users with extension languages like BASIC, and users actually taking advantage of it. There are a lot of spreadsheets and word docs macro'd to the gills out there made by folks who "know not what they do".

Do they following any modern programming practices? Nope. Are they "quality code"? Nope. Maintainable? Barely, but most probably not by anyone but the original author.

But do they let the user get their task done more efficiently and actually leverage that thing on their desk as an actual computer rather than simply an advanced typewriter or calculator? Hella ya!

I lift my glass to all of the Excel, Word, and Access hacks out there Getting It Done. Tip of the hat to Doctors and Engineers who hunt and pecked their own solutions using BASIC and DBase and a book from Osbourne. HyperCard was a gift from the Gods themselves.

It's nice when the masses make messes at the bases of the Ivory Towers, and actually get stuff accomplished.

We need more of it.

Well said - and that would include people like me.

I frankly don't understand. Python is:
- easier than Basic
- more powerful than Basic
- teaches correct programming practices better than Basic.

I understand that people shouldn't causally be exposed to the guts of C++ or Java, or to the chaos of Perl. But if we have good languages that are both easy and powerful, why sticking with Basic? What does Basic better than Python?

All matters of opinion. I had learned a few programming languages before I gave Python a shot, and it's still opaque and unusable to me.

But this is all academic. The important thing is for people to get started programming, someway, somehow. Then they can decide for themselves what to learn next.

To be blunt, availability.

Specifically with regards to what's embedded in many applications, BASIC is what you get.

If you have MS Office, it has VBA built in. No downloads, no looking, no nothing. In fact, it's best feature is the fact that if you use the tool enough you'll simply bumble in to it.

Normal human beings (i.e. not us) program computers for specific reasons, to accomplish goals and do work for them. When most of that work in within other applications, that's where they want the code to be as well.

Scripting languages et al are great for scripting the System, the OS, but not necessarily so for scripting applications.

Most folks need to script the apps, not the system.

< For education, why not study/use minix?

because he wants to programm his own kernel.

is this the first linux-clone?
and as such, another important step to world domination?

This very likely is a very minimal but clean kernel.

And points out a major problem for companies like MicroSoft if they were to really try and press their claims that Linux code infringes on their patents.

If they were to make it stick, the entire OSS community can switch to a different one. Of-course I would likely expect to switch to be to something like BSD, but it is nice to know there are a number of kernels out there.

My favorite is the Sanders Kernel. It makes frequent use of forks, and includes special acquisition containers called buckets (default size = 12). It also utilizes specialized distributed processing centers called Kernel Federation Centers, or KFC for short.

[EDIT - spelling]

Edited 2007-07-31 18:24

The website says:The Fiwix kernel will be publicly available under an open license when it reaches the 1.0 version.

Someone has to explain him the "release early/release often" thing. But probably he doesn't want to be bothered with endless discussions on how to do this and that and "hey that's my cool hack for SATA support".

He wants a clean, educational thing. So I understand him.

"Someone has to explain him the "release early/release often" thing."

Maybe he doesn't think that's a great development model?
I know I don't.