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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

#231

Post by elliotec »

bitJericho wrote: post #214
anexprogrammer wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with this, there's also another big advantage that the article doesn't mention - the instant response and lack of distraction. 30 years ago you turned on, and in seconds were at a DOS prompt. Now you had to load something, to do just that. A C64 or other 8 bit turned on instantly to BASIC. Everyone could program enough to make scrolly insults of their sister or swear and beep on the demo machines in the store.…

This is why I collect, maintain and most importantly, make available at a whim many old consoles and computers. Anyone can experience the joy of instantly available basic, duck hunt, Mario paint and many other classic and historically significant games and programs more easily than even when I was a kid. I use LG auto switchers to connect everything so anyone just has to turn on the equipment they want to use. On top…

A cool idea could be to do something with those collections like open up an interactive historical technology museum or something like that.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#232

Post by mark-r »

recursive wrote: post #212
mark-r wrote: post #192

So who will do an equivalent of QBasic for the web? It seems that the language is simple enough to be implemented entirely in Javascript. Then you wouldn't have to deal with the hassle of installing.

You mean javascript? It's already implemented in your browser.

No, I mean implementing a full Basic interpreter in Javascript. For nostalgia's sake, or for teaching the kids, as in the article.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#233

Post by panic »

vinceguidry wrote: post #110
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…

Maybe the difference is that holding a bow is a physical skill? Once physical skills become second nature it's harder to unlearn them.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#234

Post by rtpg »

jlg23 wrote: post #230
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?)

> 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

I think this isn't that FP languages themselves are not good for programming games, but that the languages don't really bring much more to the table.

Even when writing games in C, you end up writing many things in a very functional way by default. You have some state variables, and on every tick you advance things around in a very defined fashion, and redraw the screen.

The "default" pattern for making games is so close to functional languages already that the only thing moving to purely functional languages gives you is a tutorial on State monads.

In a way, this is a way of saying that functional languages are good for games, though...

meanwhile, OOP-style tools are extremely useful in games, because you often find yourself working with Entities with a lot of shared behaviour. The abstraction maps well to the concrete structure of a game.

Going to an FP-language will often cause you to sacrifice many OOP-centric language niceties without bringing much to the table to replace those niceties. In game programming, I think the tradeoff is much harder to justify than in other domains.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#235

Post by GregBuchholz »

voltagex_ wrote: post #220
acomjean wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned through logo in middle school. A language sophisticated enough to later (high school) write programs that would take equations and graph them. Plus who doesn't love writing software to create spirograph graphics.

I come back to Logo probably once every 2 years, for about 15 years now. First used it in primary (elementary) school but never really progressed past spirographs. I think I'll fire it up again this weekend - any hints?

Something more than a weekend splurge:

Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics

http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial...

...and I've not yet tried it, but netlogo sounds interesting.

https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#236

Post by digi_owl »

copperx wrote: post #209
digi_owl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic issue is that Python do not have a UI lib of its own, so if you want to do anything beyond a CLI you need to introduce a third party.

Well, Java does have a UI lib of its own and it doesn't make shipping an executable simpler.

This is not about shipping executables. Its about kids being able to sit down and bang out a program, complete with a UI.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#237

Post by ido »

mzs wrote: post #112
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 think you might be onto something. For my oldest son I tried to help him along in python. Just poking about in the interpreter went great, but pygame overwhelmed him and when his laptop died he never picked-up again where he left-off. For my youngest son I introduced him to awk first. In an editor he would edit the script and then run it in the terminal. I explained how every line goes in order. At first his script…

Python is nice, but pygame is just a wrapper around sdl. I am not surprised it was not appealing.

How do you do graphics in awk? If you don't then using js and one of the html5/canvas based game engines might be a reasonable step forward.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#238

Post by voltagex_ »

GregBuchholz wrote: post #235
voltagex_ wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come back to Logo probably once every 2 years, for about 15 years now. First used it in primary (elementary) school but never really progressed past spirographs. I think I'll fire it up again this weekend - any hints?

Something more than a weekend splurge: Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial... ...and I've not yet tried it, but netlogo sounds interesting. https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

Offtopic: That netlogo site presents what appears to be an Internet2 cert signed by "InCommon RSA Server CA". It's untrusted by Firefox 45.0.2.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#239

Post by voltagex_ »

GregBuchholz wrote: post #235
voltagex_ wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come back to Logo probably once every 2 years, for about 15 years now. First used it in primary (elementary) school but never really progressed past spirographs. I think I'll fire it up again this weekend - any hints?

Something more than a weekend splurge: Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial... ...and I've not yet tried it, but netlogo sounds interesting. https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

Turtle Geometry book as a "borrowable" ePub (DRM). https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3267302W/Turtle_geometry

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#240

Post by bitwize »

jlg23 wrote: post #230
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?)

> 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

GOAL is hella imperative by design -- it gives you better-than-C-level control over memory and control flow, and the option to drop down to assembly (for the PS2 CPU, GPU, or sound processor) inline, in Lisp syntax.

GOAL had a fast coroutine implementation written in it that enabled, among other things, autosave while the game engine kept running without a hitch in the Jak & Daxter series.

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