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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

#141

Post by brianobush »

edtechdev wrote: post #123

Try to teach your kids programming this way, and you are more than likely only going to turn them off programming for many years. There is actual research on teaching kids how to code. Personally, I would start with code.org or Scratch. If you have an ipad, there is Hopscotch. Here is a huge list of more tools to teach young kids programming: http://bit.ly/ortonacode But if you start with basic or python, you'll be t…

Unfortunately, I agree. I burnt my kids out on programming because I went the old school route. Of course, it depends on the child, but expectations of computers (and applications) are much greater now.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#142

Post by nickpsecurity »

e12e wrote: post #138
jandrese wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are teaching him awk? Are you trying to create a supervillain?

Well, it could be worse, (s)he could be teaching him REBOL/SPITBOL - and then he'd be disappointed by all new programming languages he encounter later in life...

Or How to Design Programs with Dr Racket. Same effect.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#143

Post by nickpsecurity »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #12
drhayes9 wrote: post #4

I learned to program on an Apple ][, where the programming environment was always a CTRL+RESET away. BASIC was great. I carefully typed long programs that I found in the back of computer magazines, broke them by changing stuff, and fiddled around endlessly. Those incantations are still in my fingers (CALL -3116 for a nice visual effect, PEEK -16384 for the current keyboard key, VTAB and HTAB to get around the screen,…

What about running BASIC on a Raspberry Pi? There are even some distros that boot into BASIC and can work with the GPIO pins of a Raspberry Pi. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-bas...

Not to mention MikroBASIC that works with all the major microcontrollers. They have a MikroPascal, too.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#144

Post by arkad »

duaneb wrote: post #77
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 think that Javascript in today's browser is a fine substitute. I cannot think of a more complicated way to introduce someone to programming. Yes, you can use `alert` and print things, but that's about where the ease of interaction ends.

Friendly sarcastic mode on: how about ABAP after week long installation of SAP env on your kids lap? :)

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#145

Post by szatkus »

sharpneli wrote: post #134
edtechdev wrote: post #123

Try to teach your kids programming this way, and you are more than likely only going to turn them off programming for many years. There is actual research on teaching kids how to code. Personally, I would start with code.org or Scratch. If you have an ipad, there is Hopscotch. Here is a huge list of more tools to teach young kids programming: http://bit.ly/ortonacode But if you start with basic or python, you'll be t…

Boring puzzles? The very original article showed what kind of programs the kid made. Far from boring puzzle. When I was 8-9 I started with QBasic with the first program being pretty much identical as what the kid in the article did. Then we did text adventures with friends. They were simply awesome back then. Then we moved to graphics as we figured out how to draw lines etc. Animation was beyond us but managing to dr…

When I was 10 and known Basic only from book I was wondering what would happen with that code:

    10 echo "hello"
    20 goto 10
After trying that I was quite disappointed that computers are that stupid...

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#147

Post by hnal943 »

brianpgordon wrote: post #139

I think TI-BASIC is a strong competitor. A free-form keyboard can be overwhelming and the different things you can do aren't very discoverable. In the TI-BASIC environment on the TI-82/83/83+/84+, the keywords (Goto, While, Disp, ClrHome, etc) are tokens which must be inserted into the program by selecting them from menus. So you get a rich set of powerful commands (easily in the hundreds, even for the simple TI-84,…

This is exactly how I fell in love with programming. My first program of any size solved systems of equations using 3 or 4 methods and showed its work. The satisfaction was incredible.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#148

Post by nxzero »

Key to get people coding, doesn't matter what the language, platform, etc. is in my opinion. Think I've worked in more than 20 or 30 languages to help someone new to programming write some programs. Each language has it own set of strengths and weaknesses, but normally my experience is that the person having a choice, is really important to them sticking with it.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#150

Post by tlarkworthy »

kmill wrote: post #111
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 was one of my first languages I learned (as a young child), and I am fairly certain I rarely used goto, since the language does have if/for/do/while. Interpreting these structures is still fairly linear, since each part manipulates some variables, and possibly jumps to one of the delimiters (if to end, do from loop, etc.) The language even has some structured procedure/function definitions, though I didn't gra…

Construct 2 is like games factory but better
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