30 years later, QBasic is still the best • Hacker News Board

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#151

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #129

todd8 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is there is no ISO Standard for the appliance interfaces. Do you press power level first? Or time first. Is it Forth like, numbers then operation or Haskell like, Function then number. My refrigerator has illuminated bars indicating how cold it is set for. Even after downloading a pdf of the user guide I can't figure out if I'm setting it correctly. Placing a thermometer inside and using trial and er…

And why does every single key press have to beep??

So that you know it worked. Even without looking at the small display that also usually changes in response.

This is what I miss about older technology - especially dumbphones. The input always worked, and always worked with the same timing. I could operate my Sony Ericsson K800i without looking at the screen because my brain memorized the sequences of buttons and timings of common operations. Joystick press, up, up, press, down, press, wait about a second, press, done. Compare with Android phones which routinely ignore or misinterpret input ("that was a swipe, not a press!"), and hang at unpredictable moments for unpredictable amount of time (usually also ignoring input while hung).

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#152

Post by mwcampbell » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #129

todd8 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is there is no ISO Standard for the appliance interfaces. Do you press power level first? Or time first. Is it Forth like, numbers then operation or Haskell like, Function then number. My refrigerator has illuminated bars indicating how cold it is set for. Even after downloading a pdf of the user guide I can't figure out if I'm setting it correctly. Placing a thermometer inside and using trial and er…

And why does every single key press have to beep??

One benefit, though not necessarily intended by the manufacturers, is that blind users get some kind of feedback for each keypress, since there's usually no tactile feedback on a microwave.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#153

Post by dunkelheit » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:40 PM UTC

QBasic is what got me started with programming more than 20 years ago. The thrill of writing a program that draws a rectangle, than erases it and draws slightly to the left and then watching the rectangle zoom across the screen hasn't been surpassed ever since.

If you want to teach a visual person like myself programming and the programming environment requires more than one statement to put something on the screen (including import statements), it has already lost to QBasic.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#154

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

todd8 wrote: post #92

takno wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The real problem is there is no ISO Standard for the appliance interfaces. Do you press power level first? Or time first. Is it Forth like, numbers then operation or Haskell like, Function then number. My refrigerator has illuminated bars indicating how cold it is set for. Even after downloading a pdf of the user guide I can't figure out if I'm setting it correctly. Placing a thermometer inside and using trial and er…

Personally I think problems people have with appliances like microwave ovens are a combination of fear and intellectual laziness (aka. not expecting to have to figure out anything for themselves anymore). Probably the same thing as with computers in general[0].

Most of appliances provide functions expected from devices of their class and follow obvious patterns that you quickly internalize. I have a running bet with my friends that I can operate any electronic appliance without a manual. The hardest case I've ever had so far was setting the clock on a microwave that provided alternative functionality under "START" button when the oven doors were open. It took me a few minutes to crack that one.

[0] - https://xkcd.com/627/

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#155

Post by PavlovsCat » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:44 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #41

wvenable wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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…

Yeah.. kids are tougher than we tend to give them credit for. I got an Amiga 500 when I was 10 years old, try playing Carrier Command, Elite or something like that without a manual and no clue what any of the words mean :) We sometimes didn't get very far, or missed out on many aspects, but there was still so much we did get out of it, so we kept hanging on, and with everything we understood, other things became easier to understand. I basically learned English that way, once I got a dictionary, since the coolest and best games and applications generally were in English. I didn't even notice I was learning you might say, I was too busy stacking boxes to get the banana :D

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#156

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:46 PM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #57

rbanffy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My favorite is the date, where you months are 0 to 11, and days are 1 - 31. Along with optional semicolons, and there's this[1]: true == 1 → true true == "1" → true false == 0 → true false == "0" → true false == undefined → false false == null → false null == undefined → true "\t\r\n" == 0 → true "\t\r\n 16 \t\r\n" == 16 → true "\t\r\n 16 \t\r\n" == "16" → false var a = "foobar" var b = typeof a → 'string' var c = a…

> My favorite is the date, where you months are 0 to 11, and days are 1 - 31.

I think this is something you need to blame UNIX for. Or who knows, maybe something made even earlier.

That said, there is a logic behind that. Days we usually represent with numbers. Months we often represent with names. So the month numbers are returned as an index of a sequence of names. (Not saying I like this logic, but it sort of makes sense.)

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#157

Post by pc2g4d » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:48 PM UTC

epsylon wrote: post #108

clock_tower wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GOSUB got me pretty far!

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#158

Post by EugeneOZ » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:49 PM UTC

dceddia wrote: post #93

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.

Sure! Just locate the element you want to draw in, set up a 2d context, start a path, move to one end of the line, draw a line, and then stroke that line so it fills in! How much simpler could it be really?

In QBasic it takes even less symbols than your response has :)

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#159

Post by fit2rule » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:49 PM UTC

My kids have a great time with PICO8:

http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

The fact that everything you need to build a game is built-in is very key to their enjoyment - they don't need to deal with any operating system in this environment, and have (almost) everything they need to be self-contained developers. (Built-in docs would be nice..)

Its interesting, having watched the evolution of PICO8, to see the mass explosion in creativity around the scene, and I have observed a key to its success - by putting constraints on what you can do and how you can do it, while also filling in the inner space of those constraints with excellent tooling, you give people freedom - within a limit - to create amazing things that push those limits.

You can read more about PICO8 (if you're interested) in this wonderful 'zine, which reflects the culture of the scene very well:

http://pico8fanzine.bigcartel.com

Another big hit is LOAD81, from antirez:

http://github.com/antirez/load81

This, I think, is better than QBasic, in that it has all the same functionality in the IDE, but teaches them a better language: Lua. Plus you can install it almost everywhere you can't install QBasic.

Anyway, in case any other HN'er out there is interested in doing stuff like this with their kids, give PICO8 and LOAD81 a try .. they're both, in my opinion, great ways to get young minds programming ..

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#160

Post by e12e » Thu, May 05, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #142

e12e wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was actually suggest Racket as a great platform for learning programming (it's a "real" language/platform, decent IDE, support for building stand-alone executables, great documentation, sold cross-platform support) - but was a little surprised that I couldn't find a BASIC #lang-uage extension for Racket. It would seem that a BASIC mode and maybe a pure turtle graphics mode should be pretty trivial to make for Racket.

Not that scheme is a terrible language.