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From: Frank Reed (no email)
Date: Tue Sep 06 2005 - 16:29:40 EDT
You liked QuickBasic? Then maybe that's what you should use. I use it
regularly. It runs fine under Win98, WinXP etc., despite a little warning when you
first launch it that says it's totally incompatible. Actually, I use
Microsoft Basic 7 which was a slight improvement over QB but indistinguishable in
most respects so that's the version that I can say definitely runs. The code I
posted during August was indeed QuickBasic code, and I even use GOTOs once in
a while (I find it easier to write "GOTO xxx" before a block of code I want
to skip and then "xxx:" after it than to write "IF (0=1) THEN" before and "END
IF" after...). Getting a legal copy of QuickBasic or one of its cousins may
be difficult since it hasn't been published in over a decade, but you should
be able to get "a" copy from somewhere. And if you owned a legal copy in the
past, that license is probably still in effect. Someone wanna zip up a copy
and e-mail it over to Huxtable-land?
If not QB then look at Javascript, as Robert Gainer also suggested, and
VBscript. Both of these run interpreted through most standard web browsers
without requiring an Internet connection. VBscript is very similar to old
QuickBasic in many respects, and you can be up and programming in a few hours. You
*already* have the ability to run this code on your computer. I can't find H.
Umland's navigation tools web site anymore (it seems to have moved), but he had
a number of pages, including a predicted geocentric lunar distance
calculator, that were written in Javascript. That means you could save the page
locally and run it by opening the saved page with your browser. The code is right
there on your computer. By opening the page with a text editor, you can look
at and modify the code. All the documentation you might ever require is
available on the Internet and also in numerous printed books at practically every
skill level but be careful to pay attention to the difference between
server-side and client-side scripting. You want client-side. The cost for this option
is next to nothing.
Next step up, similar to Jared Sherman's recommendation, would be VBA
(Visual Basic for Applications) which is excellent and extremely flexible. The
catch is that you don't have this on your computer *unless* you own Microsoft
Excel or some other portion of the MS Office suite. If you don't have Excel,
it's an expensive solution. If you do have it, dive right in.
I agree that most of the object oriented programming details in languages
like C++ are irrelevant to things like navigational calculations. If you decide
you want a "real" programming environment that can generate true stand-alone
Windows executables (and Mac executables, too), I recommend "RealBasic" from
realsoftware.com. They released a brand new version in early July which was
a little buggy, but I believe they've fixed most of those problems. You could
find out by reading the message boards on their site. There is a free trial
version, and low-cost standard license.
Finally, if you can find a low-price service provider (like
discountasp.net), you might want to consider Basic programming on the server-side. Mostly for
my own entertainment, I've written a series of navigational and other
scientific tools that reside on a server; I have no idea where the computer is
physically located. I can run the software from any browser including the
extremely simple web browser on a cell phone. All the calculation is done "out
there". It's a lot of fun, and the programming skills required are only slightly
beyond the QuickBasic level. This option has a variable start-up cost and a
small annual cost.
-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
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