Tatung Computer Forum

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

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

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.

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.