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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

#221

Post by mondoshawan »

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…

I don't quite get this assumption -- qbasic doesnt have line numbers unless you want them. Noah's code didnt even have any in the pictures.

Qbasic has subs and functions, so structured programmig is entirely possible in that environment. Additionally, it isn't compiled -- every time you move your cursor off of the currently edited line, qbasic converts that directly to bytecode for interpretation later.

This isn't the 1988 PC BIOS basica.com. :-)

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#222

Post by nickpsecurity »

versteegen wrote: post #185
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've been using FreeBASIC for about 10 years and help maintain a 100+kLOC codebase written in it (a game engine). FreeBASIC has multiple dialects; there's the qb dialect that supports most of QB except some audio and real-mode DOS-related commands, and the modern fb dialect, which is all of C plus half of C++ with BASIC syntax. And it does improve on C and C++ in several ways, like much better string support and a "p…

Thanks for the review. Sounds like it's what I used to call an "industrial" BASIC where it has the features and compiler to get real work done. Many people think some toy with a few key words and interpretation when they think BASIC. Yet, I used to do all my hacking in it and Visual Basic 6 for GUI layer. Loved VB6 specifically for rapid iteration: instant load, instant test-run, instant... you name it on P3 400Mhz w/ 128MB RAM.

That efficiency on arbitrary hardware is something industrial BASIC's and Wirth languages have in common. Only Go can touch it these days but still not low-level as Wirth stuff gets.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#223

Post by unexistance »

bloaf wrote: post #168
TeMPOraL wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. There's a lot of truth t…

I love this article: https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/ruins-of-forgo...

hoorah for mathematical basis

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#224

Post by bigger_cheese »

ajuc wrote: post #94

I introduced my 10 years old cousin to turbo pascal when we met a few years ago. It took less than 3 hours to download it, install (also the patches to run on modern computer), make a game where you can move a circle around the screen, and teach him how can he modify it and how basic syntax works. There's nothing like that in modern programming. Python comes close, but is too magical.

My Dad taught me Turbo Pascal when I was about 7 or 8 years old, this was the early 90's msdos environment. I wrote one or two very simple programs got bored and moved on to other things. I just didn't have the attention span for it at that age.

When I was 13 I taught myself html. I used to write webpages by opening up notepad in Windows 95 and typing in all the tags (frames tables even the dreaded blink tag). I consider this my first real experience with programming.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#226

Post by intrasight »

jovanni wrote: post #122
wvenable wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Scratch is the wrong approach to teaching programming altogether. It's cute but it doesn't give the same thrill as turning text into action.

I think the "thrill of turning text into action" might be an adult sentiment. I wouldn't write this off. I decided I wanted to learn to "program" when I was 8, but I had no mentors, and no adults I knew could tell me how programs were made. I found QBasic lurking in the C drive, and got some books from the library, but without anyone to help my 8 year old brain couldn't get far alone. I got it to switch resolutions a…

My daughter learned to program with Scratch. It is definitely the right approach for more visually-oriented kids. She created some cool (to her) games, and found it so compelling that she turned some of her friends onto Scratch, who also then created games. Playing each others games and looking at the "code" was an important aspect of the learning experience.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#227

Post by jordan0day »

One of my disappointments with the original Raspberry Pi was that I felt that its genesis story was from people whose early experience with programming came from Apple II's and QBASIC. It was pitched as a way to expose kids today to that same kind of low-overhead, get-in-and-start-making-things-happen experience some of us had 25 years ago.

Imagine my disappointment when the Pi's getting started experience was "Boot into a graphical window manager, open up the Python IDE, start writing Python..."

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#228

Post by lsllc »

jordan0day wrote: post #227

One of my disappointments with the original Raspberry Pi was that I felt that its genesis story was from people whose early experience with programming came from Apple II's and QBASIC. It was pitched as a way to expose kids today to that same kind of low-overhead, get-in-and-start-making-things-happen experience some of us had 25 years ago. Imagine my disappointment when the Pi's getting started experience was "Boot…

The RPi guy(s) grew up on BBC BASIC:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-bas...

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#229

Post by elijahparker »

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 learned programming in QBasic when I was 12, wrote thousands of lines creating a Windows 3.1 style GUI complete with a help file reader that included hyperlinks. For me the limiting factor wasn't organization -- functions and subs worked well (and I loved the byref and byval parameter definitions). The real limit was speed, which drove me to learn C and was amazed that everything I wrote appeared to execute instantly compared to QBasic

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#230

Post by jlg23 »

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?)

> Probably not functional programming, though, since functional's not very good for games

Can you elaborate on that? People have actually written games in FP languages ([1], [2]).

[1] http://www.cliki.net/game

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp

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