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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

#191

Post by tujv »

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…

Yes, I used The Games Factory for many years! It would also create stand-alone installers that would fit in a floppy.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#193

Post by tdeck »

One important thing about QBasic that's often overlooked is that it's a community of 100% amateurs.

I learned to program in 2004 in QBasic, although I very rarely fire it up anymore. By then it was not considered a "serious" language and we all knew it. But that meant the stakes were a lot lower. It's a lot of newbies and a few old-timers who do things for fun. This makes things a lot less intimidating for the non-coder. There are no conferences, no corporate sponsors, no polarizing big-shot Twitter personalities. It's a realm surprisingly insulated from the pissing contest of modern engineering culture and technical progress, where things that are acknowledged to be easy in other languages are nonetheless praised as impressive when done in QBasic.

Another thing is that QBasic has no decent library functionality for code reuse (QB4.5 has a linker but no one knows how to use it). This means people constantly reinvent the wheel, and they aren't told not to. People copy and paste snippets of code and learn how they work, but they don't build ever more complex mashups every year. Thus, you're not on the framework treadmill or starting 5 years behind the curve. Things are done simply and idiosyncratically, pretty much the same way they were done in 1995 or 1988.

Makes me nostalgic just thinking about it.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#194

Post by Annatar »

bloaf wrote: post #105
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…

> WTF has everybody been doing for the past 10-20 years?

They have mostly been touching and stroking themselves by inventing a new programming language every 15 minutes, rather than sitting their asses down for ten years, mastering one language properly, and then squeezing the living daylights out of it in performance, simplicity and efficiency... nope, that requires actual work, it's much cooler to invent yet another way of doing the exact same thing: wheee! Look at me, I invented yet another language!!!

THAT is what they've been doing.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#197

Post by icebraining »

Annatar wrote: post #184
icebraining wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prog…

You missed out - there is nothing quite like getting your first picture on the screen with the Copper, or doing your first scroller with the Blitter, or hearing your first Future Composer tune play correctly inside of a working level 3 interrupt request...

Yeah, we couldn't afford a computer back then. I learned by spending my Saturdays on the public computers at the library, hence why having access to an interpreter that didn't need to be installed was awesome.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#198

Post by nsxwolf »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #151
nsxwolf wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

But I can't microwave something late at night without waking the whole house up!

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#199

Post by kowdermeister »

jsnell wrote: post #27
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…

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…

Canvas is not a bad idea, but try Processing also. API is really simple, documentation is great filled with examples.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#200

Post by TeMPOraL »

nsxwolf wrote: post #198
TeMPOraL wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

But I can't microwave something late at night without waking the whole house up!

Your keys are actually louder than the microwave itself? :o.

(At least every microwave I ever operated was pretty loud when cooking.)

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