Makes me wonder how the human species managed to land anything on Mars ...

Simple, they used my string-math method! Oh wait, that's how Columbus discovered India, only it turned out to be America. Oh well, he identified the indigenous people as Indians, so that's all that really mattered. But the more important question is, why do people think if Martians existed, they would be smarter than humans? After all, they have antenna, and we have cable!

Pete

Which is easier to type:

Const pi = 3.1415

or

Dim Shared pi as some type
pi = 3.1415

Ah...

Pi = 3.1419

Nice thing about BASIC. It automatically uses a default SINGLE designation for Pi, in this case. No need to DIM it.

Pete

I take a dim view of Dim.

I miss DEF FN, too, but by definition, CONSTANT means a variable that never changes. That is to say the compiler sets aside less space, because it is a fixed value.

I had a discussion in antoehr thread about this, let's see...

"I hardly ever use constants. From the old days, it was a way to save that coveted stack space. This is because a constant is compiled with less allocated space, since the compiler knows it won't be changing in value. Those days are behind us, so this type of optimization is now more of a coding preference than a necessity for large applications. Readability is somewhat an advantage to constants. The programmer, or someone else studying the code, is informed of the variables which are fixed. No need to track them when debugging. For coders who have a hard time keeping things straight, constants prevent the mistake of taking a non declared variable, meant to be a constant, and mistakenly assigning it a new value, someplace in the code. That's called OOPs programming!"

Pete

I don't like lines extended over to China horizontally because of use of colons but do like these little ditties, with single statements per line. Neither do I like too many single letter variables unless they are obvious like x, y, mx, my, s$ for temp string of text$. I like nice readable short code.

I have an idea for a game library to make writing 10 liners, more or less, easier.
Why waste code on the usual sh... stuff?

For instance the game library could have:

Code: QB64: [Select]

1. Const Sh = 800, Sw = 600
2. DIM SHARED AS LONG Mx, My, k$, done, Lim
3. Screen _NewImage(Sw, Sh, 32)
4. Do
5.    Cls
6.    WHILE _MOUSEINPUT: WEND
7.    Mx = _MouseX: My = _MouseY
8.    k$ = Inkey$
9.    PlayGameCodeHere  ' read and execute your 10 liner here
10.    _Display
11.    _Limit Lim ' let coder set Lim
12. Loop Until done

Actually that would be the main code and then $Include the 10 liner game.

@bplus You have a lot of tricks up your sleeve, but I'll bet DIMming k$ as "LONG" is not one of them. :D

I completely agree about the line challenge and non-use of colons. Every colon is another line, in my opinion. Oh course, characters could be counted, but that's not entirely fair either, as certain keywords are longer than others.

I use the same approach to most of my larger programs. Make a central hub, and run sub-routines from it. This method allowed me to always know the program flow would continuously be cycled through that hub. Back in the old days, it provided a way to time the program, and evoke a screen saver. Other advantages existed, too.

@Dav Speaking of screen savers, in the paragraph above, I would have loved to have the plasma one you posted! Very cool!

@Kiara87 I get it, more of a discussion concerning optimization of BASIC code, rather than the use of BASIC libraries to develop OOP. Most of what I see of a practical aspect of this is the use of creative algorithms, mostly math formulas, like Dav and Bill posted in their 10-liners. The downside of "optimization" when it comes to limiting lines of code, ironically, results in obfuscation, much the same too many lines of convoluted code produce. Use of GOTO statements, for example, to cut down on a loop line code. I consider that bad coding practice, especially to introduce it, in a positive way, to a beginner. I consider BASIC best for coders who like to build things from the foundation up. All I ever heard from C communities is "You need a library for that." That was their response to me trying to write a keyboard function in C. I eventually accomplished it, because it was possible with C/C++ statements, but I was not too happy that such a large community completely lost track of how to build a program from the foundation up.

Pete

PS @Dimster That was just a typo on Mark's part. He was just giving a skeleton, almost pseudo-code, example of how to set up a 10-line hub to run a program. Sorry for the late reply, you posted while I was writing.

And then it gets even uglier...


Pete

PS Steve? This is the first for me. I don't believe I made a guess a number routine before this.

Makes me think we need a new QB64 keyword...

_ROUNDUP

Pete :D

You mean something like this?


Pete

- I'm really more of a one-liner kind of guy.

Both of these last two code examples are great, but totally unrealistic. You guys are missing the Tangle Effect. This is a law of physics that states any string in motion eventually ends up as a knot. Yep, you guessed it. Pete's knot happy!

Maybe we need a computer simulation board. These are, kidding aside, very cool!

Pete