HHC 2018 Programming Contests

[toml_12953]

(09-13-2018 10:05 PM)Valentin Albillo Wrote:  .
Hi, Joe:

(09-13-2018 02:17 PM)Joe Horn Wrote:  [...]there will be three categories, each with a Most Elegant winner: HP-41CX RPN, RPL (any model), and HP PPL (Prime).

Not that I intend to attend HHC 2018 or enter any of its Programming Contests, but I would really appreciate it if you or someone else sufficiently qualified could give me some rationale or explanation on why RPN, RPL and HP PPL are admitted languages but the very capable and advanced HP-71B BASIC language is not (let alone HP-71B FORTH).

Regards.
V.
.

BASIC is actually hated by many people who were computer science graduates. They don't consider using BASIC to be real programming. They aren't familiar with modern versions of BASIC that have all the control structures of any structured language. Also, many of them believe that BASIC is an interpreter and is slow. Microcomputer versions of BASIC were implemented as interpreters due to limited memory but BASIC is neither an interpreter nor a compiler. It's a programming language that can be implemented either way. In fact there are compiled versions of BASIC that can be as fast as the fastest C compilers available.