BASIC-PLUS

Has anyone else noticed how difficult it is to read BASIC-PLUS programs compared to modern languages. As a teenager I used to think BASIC-PLUS was the greatest language ever invented, but the lack of procedures and local variables makes it quite tedious to figure out what is going on. Also, all of the crazy bit twiddling that DEC does in the CUSPS makes it even worse.

I guess my favorite language right now is Java. If you ignore all the hype and the battles between Microsoft and Sun the core language is really easy to read and write. But, it is most definitely not "write once, run everywhere" as Sun would like us to believe. I wrote a 10,000 line Java program for WinNT and Sun Solaris, and the AWT package had distinctly different behavior on the two platforms. The program would run fine on one platform and hang on the other. It was really a pain to figure out how to get it to run consistently on both platforms.