Posted By
Csabo
on 2015-10-18
08:13:25
|  Re: Commodore Basic's oddnesses
Yeah, those are perhaps odd at first blush. But if you think about it, they probably had very good reasons to do it that way.
The problem with integers in for loops would be the STEP clause. FOR A%=1 TO 10 STEP 0.5 ... Now what? 
The IF-ELSE thing is even more clear cut: our BASIC has no concept of "program blocks" (like begin/end in Pascal or curly braces in C/Java). Therefore the syntax is IF (condition) THEN statement1 : statement2 : statementN : ELSE statement(s). The point is, there can be multiple statements before an ELSE, and those do have to be separated by colons.
So yeah, maybe a little odd, but it does make sense, I think. It's not like our Respected Elders(TM) were infallible, but they did make some pretty amazing, well thought-out stuff long before out time 
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