30 years later, QBasic is still the best • Hacker News Board

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#41

Post by 29athrowaway » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #29

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/

That project name is QB64. QuickBasic is from Microsoft.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#42

Post by GnarfGnarf » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

Ca. 1990 I wrote an X.25 Network Integrity and Performance System (NIPS) in QBasic. It polled the PADS (Packet assembler/disassembler) for statistics, and displayed traffic and error conditions on the control monitor. Worked great.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#43

Post by teddyh » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

ISL wrote: post #30

phendrenad2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_scie…

Pascal and related languages use the notation

  x := 5

I have heard that this was to mimic (in ASCII) the look of an arrow:

  x ⇐ 5

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#44

Post by magicalhippo » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

ISL wrote: post #30

phendrenad2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_scie…

One of the reasons I still quite like Pascal.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#45

Post by dehrmann » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

QBasic was my first language, and I don't knock it for the purpose it served at the time, but for a new programmer, I'd point them at either JS (if they really want to do web things) or Python. BASIC had its time, there are better languages now, and that's ok.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#46

Post by pjfin123 » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC

Besides some Scratch early on I really got into programming in TI Basic on my graphing calculator and it was pretty great. Minimal learning curve to start writing useful programs, and sets you up well for high level languages. That being said I would probably still recommend Scratch for teaching kids to program, and Python for adults.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#47

Post by wvenable » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #45

QBasic was my first language, and I don't knock it for the purpose it served at the time, but for a new programmer, I'd point them at either JS (if they really want to do web things) or Python. BASIC had its time, there are better languages now, and that's ok.

Better languages sure but more difficult ones. I don't do Python very often but there is a still a lot to unpack there. JavaScript is in some ways easier but some ways harder.

QBASIC is on a whole different level.

When my daughter was little, I taught her how to program using Visual Basic longer after it was obsolete. But getting a window on screen and interacting with it is 100x easier there than with Python.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#48

Post by ksaj » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #36

DanBC wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> How do you draw a line on the screen in Python? Using only stdlib: import turtle turtle.penup() turtle.pencolor(colour) turtle.setpos(x1,y1) turtle.pendown() turtle.goto(x2,y2)

I am guessing that is straight-up LOGO on Python.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#49

Post by therealmarv » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

I started with GW-BASIC on a PC. QBasic is so modern :D

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#50

Post by mbank » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

Love it! I started out by manipulating simple games in qbasic. Then switched to Visual Basic and made my first serious yet small projects. In the meantime got into web design and always thought I was doing something wrong when creating a UI with HTML & co - so painful compared to the drag and drop UI creation in Visual Studio. Same when I've learned Java: UI creation was a nightmare. Sorry for going off rails...QBasic was just awesome!