XBas vs BBC Basic

[gunrock]

Silly question perhaps, but is XBAS considered a good basic? And how does it stack up against the BBC Basic for the platform?

[Lardo Boffin]

I have no answer backed up by statistics but generally speaking BBC Basic is considered one of the best (in my personal opinion the best as it has procedures and functions and you can write very complex programs without a single GOTO or GOSUB) BASICs of the era.
It may be however that if XBAS was written specifically for the Tatung that it does some things better than BBC BASIC which is obviously a port. Having looked through my BBC BASIC manual I think it can do pretty much everything that XBAS can as far as the hardware goes.

Its only fair to note that I am a little biased towards BBC BASIC as I learned to program in it. Plus I have written a fair bit using it, for example https://github.com/LardoBoffin/AdventureLanguage

[gunrock]

Thanks for your reply Mr B. I just wondered why offer two basics, but I guess if it was able to let children learn BBC Basic, parents and schools might be tempted to buy a machine.

[vanpeebles]

I guess with it being more like a dev machine, and having no language built in, that just gave you lots of choice and options.

[yevrowl]

Are there any compilers for BASIC?

[yevrowl]

There is an Xtal Basic compiler that does not work in MAME due to a floppy disk write restriction.

[Lardo Boffin]

If you go here https://www.tatungbytes.co.uk/mame-package and download the MAME emulator with Silicon Disc support you should be able to compile by putting the files on Silicon Disc as it won’t be write protected. Not sure how you will get the results from the Silicon Disc onto permanent storage though…

[yevrowl]

Lardo Boffin, that's a generous package, thanks!

But the goal of compiling it into a standalone COM file has yet to be achieved...