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30 years later, QBasic is still the best

nicolasbize.com

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Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#21

Post by wvenable »

jasode wrote: post #11

>to realize that in more than 30 years, we have not been able to come up with something better for our kids: Qbasic ..., but we have never really made a simpler or more direct access to the thrill of programming than QBasic. First, I think it's really cool that he's exposing a young mind to programming. But I'm also old enough to have installed QBasic from floppy disks and part of me thinks his statements I quoted ar…

I agree with your complaints about QBasic but I disagree a bit about JavaScript. You are totally right that the environment being right there in the browser is great. But if you press F12 right now you'll find an amazing complex dialog box -- as a professional you just implicitly skip over that complexity. And JavaScript is a significantly more difficult language than QBasic even if it's one of the simpler professional languages.

When I taught my daughter about programming I actually installed an old copy of Visual Basic 6.0 and it was really good for that. You draw the UI and the interact it with it mostly procedurally. She created a small useful application out of it. It's kind of crazy that in 2016 all our programming environments are more complicated than VB6.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#22

Post by ccozan »

Ha! Who didn't hack the gorilla throwing bananas? :)

I learned to programm with BASIC [0] before on a Spectrum ZX clone, however that GORILLA.BAS [1] was a good programming lesson. I remember even now, after 25 years, figuring out the algorithms and the parameters of the flying banana.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_BASIC [1] http://www.jefflewis.net/archive/programming/gorilla.bas

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#23

Post by snuxoll »

wvenable wrote: post #21
jasode wrote: post #11

>to realize that in more than 30 years, we have not been able to come up with something better for our kids: Qbasic ..., but we have never really made a simpler or more direct access to the thrill of programming than QBasic. First, I think it's really cool that he's exposing a young mind to programming. But I'm also old enough to have installed QBasic from floppy disks and part of me thinks his statements I quoted ar…

I agree with your complaints about QBasic but I disagree a bit about JavaScript. You are totally right that the environment being right there in the browser is great. But if you press F12 right now you'll find an amazing complex dialog box -- as a professional you just implicitly skip over that complexity. And JavaScript is a significantly more difficult language than QBasic even if it's one of the simpler profession…

Not quite 100% the same, but Python + QML comes pretty close, or once support for composite templates finally lands Python + GTK3.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#25

Post by sevensor »

ccozan wrote: post #22

Ha! Who didn't hack the gorilla throwing bananas? :) I learned to programm with BASIC [0] before on a Spectrum ZX clone, however that GORILLA.BAS [1] was a good programming lesson. I remember even now, after 25 years, figuring out the algorithms and the parameters of the flying banana. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_BASIC [1] http://www.jefflewis.net/archive/programming/gorilla.bas

In high school, we used to mess around with banana trajectories when we were supposed to be writing English papers in the computer lab.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#26

Post by icebraining »

jasode wrote: post #11

>to realize that in more than 30 years, we have not been able to come up with something better for our kids: Qbasic ..., but we have never really made a simpler or more direct access to the thrill of programming than QBasic. First, I think it's really cool that he's exposing a young mind to programming. But I'm also old enough to have installed QBasic from floppy disks and part of me thinks his statements I quoted ar…

As someone who actually learned programming with JavaScript, back in IE 5 days, I agree. Writing dumb little "guess the number" games or copy-pasting snippets from DynamicDrive.com to study and adapt made it very easy to get started, and that you can upload it to a free host and share the link gives you an extra incentive.

I've since learned a few more languages, and I don't particularly enjoy writing complex JS programs, but I'm very glad it was there when I got started.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#27

Post by jsnell »

wvenable wrote: post #21
jasode wrote: post #11

>to realize that in more than 30 years, we have not been able to come up with something better for our kids: Qbasic ..., but we have never really made a simpler or more direct access to the thrill of programming than QBasic. First, I think it's really cool that he's exposing a young mind to programming. But I'm also old enough to have installed QBasic from floppy disks and part of me thinks his statements I quoted ar…

I agree with your complaints about QBasic but I disagree a bit about JavaScript. You are totally right that the environment being right there in the browser is great. But if you press F12 right now you'll find an amazing complex dialog box -- as a professional you just implicitly skip over that complexity. And JavaScript is a significantly more difficult language than QBasic even if it's one of the simpler profession…

Yes. I've been doing Javascript + HTML games with my 9yo nephew every now and then, and the complexity of the environment as a whole is incredibly discouraging. Sure, he gets assignment, functions, conditionals and other basics. But the interface between the logic and the presentation is just so incredibly abstract that getting from those basics to anything interesting is way too hard.

I've been thinking of switching over to some other environment the next time we do that. The immediacy and integration into an environment he already uses every day are compelling advantages, and it'll be a shame to lose them. But it does feel like the downsides easily outweigh the benefits.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#29

Post by rbanffy »

onion2k wrote: post #19
jasode wrote: post #11

>to realize that in more than 30 years, we have not been able to come up with something better for our kids: Qbasic ..., but we have never really made a simpler or more direct access to the thrill of programming than QBasic. First, I think it's really cool that he's exposing a young mind to programming. But I'm also old enough to have installed QBasic from floppy disks and part of me thinks his statements I quoted ar…

JS is a fantastic language for teaching the basics of programming - introducing variables, flow control, etc. The problem is that as soon as you go beyond "write a series of statements and run them" and in to actually trying to write something interesting and fun with a little abstraction or actual software design then JS very quickly stops being a good choice. You can quickly hit synchronicity problems, weird scopin…

As soon as you get to iterate over an array, you will be confronted with JavaScript's ugly design.

No. It's a language to scare - and scar - young programmers for life.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#30

Post by GregBuchholz »

No love for Logo? I currently have my kids experimenting with ucbLogo and FMSLogo. And one of our latest endeavors is to hook it up to Minecraft [1], but that is certainly quite convoluted, with having to run minecraft servers with various plugins, and then working around the borked networking capabilities of FMSLogo, etc.. I wonder what other simple approaches there are to programmatically control Minecraft.

[1]http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/05/minecraft-graphics-tur...

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