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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

#21

Post by nsenifty »

ISL wrote: post #12

I will never forget the day that I spent debugging an early QBasic program that included a line similar to 5 = x for an assignment in the first draft. There were tears and deep frustration at the moment I discovered that assignment had a directionality. The author's story brings back so many memories of learning and growth. For those too young to know -- magazines used to come with page-long Basic programs for games…

The first time I saw X = X + 1 in a ZX Spectrum basic program listing, I thought it would cause the computer to catch fire.

I was 9 though.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#22

Post by T-hawk »

wsc981 wrote: post #4

I like BASIC and recently been thinking it might be nice to do some modern game dev on BASIC. My father got me into programming on a TI-99/4A [0] machine, so the BASIC language always has a place in my heart. However, I recently also came across a nice game development course from Harvard, CS-50 [1] (an excellent course, much recommended!). And for CS-50 the Lua language is used in combination with the LÖVE [2] frame…

+1 for the TI-99/4A, that was my introduction to computers and Basic too. I spent quite some hours typing in program listings from computer magazines from the library... none of which had versions for the TI or ever worked in the TI's odd Basic dialect.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#26

Post by pfraze »

ojnabieoot wrote: post #17
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #11

The big advantage for using BASIC to teach young children is its concreteness. In my experience, some kids have trouble understanding nested blocks (for example in Python, why the stuff in an if block is different than the surrounding code). With BASIC and GOTO everything is explicit and concrete and at the same level. They just have to trace though the program one line at a time to understand it.

I also find the idea that “if you teach kids bad procedural programming, they’ll form bad habits and struggle with modern languages” to be specious. I grew up with BASIC (Q and TI), then learned a small amount of MATLAB as a physics student. When I took a class in Scheme later in college, I was blown away by how its syntactical constructs prevented me from making the kinds of errors that plagued my imperative/procedu…

Strongly agree. The constructs are easy to move past, and worth the simplicity you get with the initial learning curve

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#27

Post by DanBC »

blunte wrote: post #23

Not to be contrarian, but Python is even simpler than Basic. You don't have GOTO, but you don't need it. Just using a subset of Python language you can do anything you need, and with less syntactic noise.

How do you draw a line on the screen in Python? Here's BASIC. I'm not saying this is good. But it is easy.

  SCREEN 13 
  LINE (X1, Y1) - (X2, Y2), COLOUR

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#28

Post by krm01 »

The warm feeling inside when I just see the word “QBasic”. Prior to QBasic I was always drawing and tinkering with physical objects. QBasic made me realize that computers are just an other canvas. One where you aren’t just a consumer but a tool that allows you to contribute, create art, build useful little programs and games (to play with my siblings during rainy days). As a 10yo then, it felt I could conquer the world. Magical tool.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#29

Post by dleslie »

wsc981 wrote: post #4

I like BASIC and recently been thinking it might be nice to do some modern game dev on BASIC. My father got me into programming on a TI-99/4A [0] machine, so the BASIC language always has a place in my heart. However, I recently also came across a nice game development course from Harvard, CS-50 [1] (an excellent course, much recommended!). And for CS-50 the Lua language is used in combination with the LÖVE [2] frame…

You should check out QuickBasic: https://www.qb64.org/portal/

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#30

Post by ISL »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #18
ISL wrote: post #12

I will never forget the day that I spent debugging an early QBasic program that included a line similar to 5 = x for an assignment in the first draft. There were tears and deep frustration at the moment I discovered that assignment had a directionality. The author's story brings back so many memories of learning and growth. For those too young to know -- magazines used to come with page-long Basic programs for games…

Honestly it's pretty strange that assignment has a directionality.

The primary difficulty that I had was the overloaded usage of the "=" character. I had a clear mathematical understanding that the "=" symbol was symmetric, that 5 = x and x = 5 were equivalent. That someone could abuse that notion so brazenly was the source of my frustration.

Some languages use directional notation for assignment (see [1]):

    5 -> x
is clear.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_(computer_science)#...

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