The first time I saw the 'C' interpreter marketed was at the 1986 COMDEX. I suppose it had been around before then, but...

If you want a 'C' interpreter, you can get one, and, in fact, there's even an embedded 'C' interpreter product of some sort. Just GOOGLE on

Now, 'C' isn't a language I have ever liked or used extensively. However, it is widely popular among those who actually do useful work on computers and microcontrollers. My reference to 'C' compilers written in 'C' is that you then have a language compiler that can compile itself, therefore showing that it's complete.

When your BasCom (we used to use a BASCOM product from Microsoft back in the '70's and '80's, under CP/M and later under MSDOS) to write a compiler for BASIC, you'll quickly see why nobody here supports your position. However, you've wandered into a region where nobody fools himself into believing that, just because you CAN do something, you should.

Without ASM support, it's hard to squeeze the last drop of performance or capability out of a microcontroller. If you don't do that, then you're cheating your employer, because you could probably do with less of something. That something usually means cost, and the boss likes things to be cheap, doesn't he?

I haven't used BASIC for anything in a decade or more. I once had a colleague who was one of the original implementors of BASIC at GE where he and others developed the well-known GE timeshared BASIC that became popular throughtout the educational world. He was in charge of the system used by our accounting department which had computers whose assembly language was BASIC. It executed (interpreted) BASIC directly.

My former business partner wrote countless applications under CP/M and MSDOS in BASIC, and subsequently compiled them with BASCOM. That hasn't made me love BASIC, though. I use ASM.



RE