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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

#251

Post by eru »

david-given wrote: post #179
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…

My microwave has two knobs. One for power, one for time. It turns on automatically when you turn the timer and turns off automatically (sounding a mechanical bell) when the timer hits zero. I believe the timer is clockwork.

And if you want something fancier, add just one more knob for grill-power.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#252

Post by anexprogrammer »

unexistance wrote: post #216
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.…

OK, now I need to know what that curated PC specs / hardware / software :D

Blimey, it was a decade or so ago. :p As they hit teen years just a normal PC+Internet was enough. From memory...

Mid spec, but old, games machine (mum or dad's old one after an upgrade).

Spent a bunch of time locking down what was in windows, what damage they could do (like deleting icons, menu items, random important things). Weekly restore from FreeBSD box. Uninstalled or removed visibility of pretty much anything that could do damage. :)

Mostly it was things that came up as they happened, and experience supporting non-tech friends and relatives - causing chaos uninstalling the wrong things, installing kazaa or whatever.

s/w wise I found a Logo (turtle graphics), Basic, couple of other languages, Amiga-like Music tracker, couple of graphics things to complement MSPaint, MAME with some classic games, a few infocom adventures and a couple of newer games for the Z interpreter (Infocom games not as popular as I thought they might be), a crossword puzzle and a few other logic/tile arrangement type puzzles.

Overall it was a great success - we didn't really need to teach anything.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#253

Post by anexprogrammer »

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…

Great idea. I really regret turfing out some of the older kit that weren't PCs. Some of the early games were much more creative (and of course some were terrible).

My kids proved frogger is just as addictive as 30 years ago! :)

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#254

Post by majewsky »

david-given wrote: post #179
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…

My microwave has two knobs. One for power, one for time. It turns on automatically when you turn the timer and turns off automatically (sounding a mechanical bell) when the timer hits zero. I believe the timer is clockwork.

I have one like these, and it's amazing. They should have stopped designing new shit after these. :)

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#255

Post by david-given »

eru wrote: post #250
marssaxman wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used one of those microwaves once. Best interface ever, and so much simpler than the high-tech beepy button matrix! Do microwave manufacturers just not realize that they're making their products worse by complicating them? I don't get it.

Knobs are more expensive than buttons?

Actually, yes. Anything with a moving part is painfully expensive, which is why cheap monitors try to reduce the number of buttons or use capacitative touch-sensitive controls.

Touch-sensitive membrane buttons like the ones the use on the front of microwaves are much cheaper than mechanical timers.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#256

Post by mzs »

ido wrote: post #243
mzs wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The awk script just does terminal escapes, so no real graphics. Canvas is pretty complicated, I'm shying away from that and also since it's time consuming and orthoganal to create pretty pictures for modern hardware. JS is even worse when you try to teach enough to be fancy and portable. In any case I spent some time on it tonight for my son. I've made a little html file that is a nice harness for him to write JS so…

yeah, i agree canvas is too low level, that's why i suggested one of the game engines that use it under the hood (thus abstracting a lot of the complexity). Phaser is a pretty decent "batteries-included"-style engine (definitely easier to use than pygame, despite js not being as nice as python). A good summery/list in general can be found at https://html5gameengine.com/

thanks ido

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#257

Post by pilif »

jmiserez wrote: post #126
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…

Visual Basic 6.0 was great for learning how to program! You could create GUIs and easily share self-contained exes with your friends. Also very cool was the documentation, complete, offline and and with lots of examples. I initially got into programming through Apple HyperCard/HyperTalk on the outdated school computers, but it was rather clunky and limiting in what you could do without going through the C interface.

> self-contained exes

Not really. The VB6 exes required a huge runtime to be installed. Plus all the visual controls lived inside of OLE DLLs als native code and you had to ship these too (and register them on the target machine)

This was the biggest motivator for me to move to Delphi because that actually produced self-contained exes and allowed you to call any Windows API directly without any COM wrappers in between.

And you had a real type system. And pointers. But you still had an easy GUI editor and a very good class library that was incredibly easy to use.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#258

Post by gcr »

ido wrote: post #243
mzs wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The awk script just does terminal escapes, so no real graphics. Canvas is pretty complicated, I'm shying away from that and also since it's time consuming and orthoganal to create pretty pictures for modern hardware. JS is even worse when you try to teach enough to be fancy and portable. In any case I spent some time on it tonight for my son. I've made a little html file that is a nice harness for him to write JS so…

yeah, i agree canvas is too low level, that's why i suggested one of the game engines that use it under the hood (thus abstracting a lot of the complexity). Phaser is a pretty decent "batteries-included"-style engine (definitely easier to use than pygame, despite js not being as nice as python). A good summery/list in general can be found at https://html5gameengine.com/

Be sure to look into LÖVE2D. A bit distantly similar to Pygame but completely self-contained and in Luna, so no dependencies to worry about. Installation couldn't be simpler.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#259

Post by qb45 »

reitanqild wrote: post #114
dceddia wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> How much simpler could it be really? The howto could be a whole lot simpler it seems, see this example, helpfully provided by neckro23 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11637866

Welcome to the Internet and let me be your guide:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=sarcasm

I sincerely wish that the post you linked was sarcastic as well, but it was probably serious which makes the (former) QBasic programmer in me a little bit sad.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#260

Post by nickpsecurity »

versteegen wrote: post #246
nickpsecurity wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I would agree with "industrial", especially since you can link with any C library after translating the headers with SWIG (translations of common libraries like C, winapi and GTK are included with FB). I've never used/don't know VB, but it appears that quite a lot of FB's design is borrowed from it. In recent years FB has been focused on borrowing C++ features instead (and even aiming to be ABI compatible with g…

Nice. Appreciate the tips.
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