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30 years later, QBasic is still the best

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Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#101

Post by 6stringmerc »

GregBuchholz wrote: post #30

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] htt…

That's what I was missing! Lots of love for Logo here. Started with that first, then eventually to QBasic. There was a lot of time spent on KidPix for a while too. That thing was insane.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#102

Post by nickpsecurity »

reikonomusha wrote: post #75
nickpsecurity wrote: post #10

For anyone that misses QBASIC, there's FreeBASIC that's a lot like it & easy to install: http://www.freebasic.net/ After loosing my memory, I have to relearn programming nearly from scratch. I took a challenge to do specific program in around an hour, from language to toolchain to solution. Had to be system-like language. Got bogged down by toolchains, IDE's, whatever. Said screw it: why the hell is it so hard when I…

I second FreeBASIC. Strong gaming community, modernized a lot of QBASIC. It's good. My first QBASIC/FreeBASIC program I've managed to write some 15 years ago: https://bitbucket.org/tarballs_are_good/nibbles-and-bits/raw...

Didnt know about its community. Ill look at the code later.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#103

Post by hangonhn »

"When developing a skill, it is much better to acquire the right reflexes from the start rather than have to correct years of bad practice."

I disagree with this statement. "Learning" is a long process of acquiring and also discarding habits and knowledge. The best intro I ever read for relativity was "An Equation That Changed the World" and it's a series of dialogues between Newton, Einstein, and the author (a modern physicist). Newtonian physics is relatively (haha) easy to understand. Once you understand that and then you can throw in some edge cases where it fails, you can introduce relativity and it makes relativity much easier to grasp.

Likewise for programming. I learned with QBasic. Then as the code got messier, I started using "sub", etc. and then started playing other concepts until I outgrew the language. Functional programming came to me the same way. I outgrew my existing methods and reached for more advanced ones.

All this is to say it's OK to start with easier and imperfect methods. We learn by acquiring new knowledge and then knowing them well enough to see their flaws before moving onto something better.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#104

Post by DanBC »

neckro23 wrote: post #91
EugeneOZ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it simple to draw a line in JS? Like in one line of simple and straight code, yes? I mean, not adding some divs to some DOM, but actually drawing a line or circle. Drawing is simplifying things for kids.

var drawing = document.createElement('canvas'); document.body.appendChild(drawing); var ctx = drawing.getContext('2d'); ctx.beginPath(); ctx.moveTo(0, 0); ctx.lineTo(100, 100); ctx.stroke(); There's a bit of ceremony in setting up the canvas, but yes, it's simple.

qbasic:

    SCREEN 13
    LINE (X1, Y1) - (X2, Y2), COLOUR

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#105

Post by bloaf »

transfire wrote: post #64

To be honest I don't think modern languages are all they are cracked up to be. Back in the day, very large and complex systems were managed quite well with languages like QBASIC, COBOL and FORTRAN, and ran rock solid for decades (hell, a few are still operational). But today, programming is such a polyglotic mess and conceptual navel-gazing nightmare -- it really is no wonder that so many projects end in failure.

As an outsider looking in: programmers, fix thy tools.

My first introduction to programming was QBasic in the 90s, and I had a great time making little pictures, beeps/bloops, and text on the screen. I then moved on to some basic Fortran and other engineering-type languages in undergrad c. 2006. My impression of the workflows for Fortran at that time was "this is more annoying than BASIC, but I guess its because its more powerful and complex. I bet they'll fix the awkwardness eventually though."

Imagine my supersize when I decide to pick up the trendy modern language of Haskell in 2015 and find out that installing, configuring, and working in it was just as bad as Fortran back in 2006. WTF has everybody been doing for the past 10-20 years?

It seems to me that because programming is a new discipline, lots of people are trying to reinvent wheels. There is nothing wrong with this, in and of itself, since we'll essentially be making sure that we get really good at making wheels and end up with really high quality specimens. The problem is that wheels by themselves aren't that useful, and no one is bothering to make an automobile.

QBasic might have had square wheels, but at least they felt attached to something.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#106

Post by joesmo »

jbandela1 wrote: post #67

For young children, QBasic and goto may indeed be superior to more structured languages. From a neuro development perspective we know that young children are very concrete and have limited abstraction ability. With Basic and goto, a program is more concrete (you run a line which is more or less 1 command) and linear (no nested structures). With structured programming, it is more abstract, and has an recursive structu…

QBasic offers structured programming. QBasic has both subroutines and functions and the IDE actually displays them in their own window, separate from the main program and other subroutines and functions. It also has if blocks, loops, etc. I don't see what else you need for structured programming. When I was young I was able to create many complex games including breakout, tennis, basketball, arcade shooters, etc. with QBasic alone.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#107

Post by bduerst »

clock_tower wrote: post #86
jbandela1 wrote: post #67

For young children, QBasic and goto may indeed be superior to more structured languages. From a neuro development perspective we know that young children are very concrete and have limited abstraction ability. With Basic and goto, a program is more concrete (you run a line which is more or less 1 command) and linear (no nested structures). With structured programming, it is more abstract, and has an recursive structu…

From my experience back when I was 12: once you get ambitious enough in QBasic, you start to wish for some way of organizing the code and making it easier to follow. At that point, an intro to structured programming or OOP is natural. (Probably not functional programming, though, since functional's not very good for games, and what else do you think QBasic is going to be used for?)

I was in the same boat at that age. I was trying to build a text-based BassTour clone in QBasic, and the book my dad bought from Radioshack didn't get into OOP. It would have made it much easier to do than that static-state version I cobbled together.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#108

Post by epsylon »

clock_tower wrote: post #86
jbandela1 wrote: post #67

For young children, QBasic and goto may indeed be superior to more structured languages. From a neuro development perspective we know that young children are very concrete and have limited abstraction ability. With Basic and goto, a program is more concrete (you run a line which is more or less 1 command) and linear (no nested structures). With structured programming, it is more abstract, and has an recursive structu…

From my experience back when I was 12: once you get ambitious enough in QBasic, you start to wish for some way of organizing the code and making it easier to follow. At that point, an intro to structured programming or OOP is natural. (Probably not functional programming, though, since functional's not very good for games, and what else do you think QBasic is going to be used for?)

QBasic supports subroutines (called SUB for procedures and FUNCTION for functions). You can write very structured code with QBasic; pretty much the only thing it lacks is pointers, but it's a very capable language otherwise.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#109

Post by glaberficken »

takno wrote: post #58
jasode wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. That observation is fascinating to me. Isn't it possible that we're judging it with adult eyes? To me, kids can filter out "ui complexity" that's not relevant to whatever exploration they are doing. Examples I think of: A microwave oven[1] might have 25 separate buttons on it b…

Does anybody at all know what more than 2 buttons do on their microwave? I thought they were mostly there for decoration

True! And what about office printers? =) The 2 machine types I dislike interacting with the most.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#110

Post by vinceguidry »

hangonhn wrote: post #103

"When developing a skill, it is much better to acquire the right reflexes from the start rather than have to correct years of bad practice." I disagree with this statement. "Learning" is a long process of acquiring and also discarding habits and knowledge. The best intro I ever read for relativity was "An Equation That Changed the World" and it's a series of dialogues between Newton, Einstein, and the author (a moder…

I'd argue that programming isn't like other skills in this regard. Obviously if you're teaching something like the violin, where there's one right way to hold the bow and learning how to play holding the bow in any other way will ultimately hamper you, sure, it's worth it to drill the One True Way.

But coding isn't like that. Sure, GOTOs as a means for control flow, suck for most serious applications compared to the readily-available alternatives, it's not like you can't build your own control flow mechanisms with their own properties out of the GOTO primitive, and learning how these work and fail is really good practice.

Time spent mucking about doing the wrong thing in coding teaches you how to ascertain the right way. Other skills don't necessarily offer this.

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