BASIC vs. Java vs. Scilab vs. Visual Basic Comparison Chart

BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. Initially, BASIC concentrated on supporting straightforward mathematical work, with matrix arithmetic support from its initial implementation as a batch language, and character string functionality being added by 1965. The emergence of BASIC took place as part of a wider movement towards time-sharing systems. Some dialects of BASIC supported matrices and matrix operations, which can be used to solve sets of simultaneous linear algebraic equations. These dialects would directly support matrix operations such as assignment, addition, multiplication (of compatible matrix types), and evaluation of a determinant. BASIC declined in popularity in the 1990s, as more powerful microcomputers came to market and programming languages with advanced features (such as Pascal and C) became tenable on such computers.

Numerical analysis or Scientific computing is the study of approximation techniques for numerically solving mathematical problems. Scilab provides graphics functions to visualize, annotate and export data and offers many ways to create and customize various types of plots and charts. Scilab is a high level programming language for scientific programming. It enables a rapid prototyping of algorithms, without having to deal with the complexity of other more low level programming language such as C and Fortran (memory management, variable definition). This is natively handled by Scilab, which results in a few lines of code for complex mathematical operations, where other languages would require much longer codes. It also comes with advanced data structure such as polynomials, matrices and graphic handles and provides an easily operable development environment.