Editing MBASIC (section)

== BASCOM ==
Microsoft sold a CP/M BASIC [[compiler]] (known as '''BASCOM''') which used a similar source language to MBASIC. A program debugged under MBASIC could be compiled with BASCOM. Since program text was no longer in memory and the run-time elements of the compiler were smaller than the interpreter, more memory was available for user data. Speed of real program execution increased about 3 fold.

Developers welcomed BASCOM as an alternative to the popular but slow and clumsy [[CBASIC]]. Unlike CBASIC, BASCOM did not need a [[preprocessor]] for MBASIC source code so could be debugged interactively.<ref name="iw19800818">{{Cite magazine |date=1980-08-18 |title=Editorial |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=az4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT47 |magazine=InfoWorld |page=8}}</ref> While approving of its superior edit-compile-run-debug loop compared to CBASIC, and stating that binaries ran far faster, [[Jerry Pournelle]] in December 1980 denounced Microsoft's requirement of a 9% royalty for each binary copy<ref name="pournelle198012">{{cite news | url=https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1980-12/1980_12_BYTE_05-12_Adventure#page/n223/mode/2up | title=BASIC, Computer Languages, and Computer Adventures | work=BYTE | date=December 1980 | access-date=18 October 2013 | author=Pournelle, Jerry | pages=222}}</ref> and $40 for hardware-software combinations. The company also reserved the right to audit developers' financial records. Because authors' typical royalty rates for software was 10-25%, ''[[InfoWorld]]'' in 1980 stated that BASCOM's additional 9% royalty rate "could make software development downright unprofitable", concluding that "Microsoft has the technical solution [to CBASIC's flaws], but not the economic one".<ref name="iw19800818"/>