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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

#61

Post by p2detar »

Me and QB had so much fun together. I would come home from school, have something to eat and then get back to programming one of my dozens of game ideas that usually went nowhere near being completed.

I remember how I spent one Christmas plotting a Christmas Tree scene with the gifts and everything on millimeter paper and then transferring and animating all that to QB in SCREEN 11 (640x480) graphics mode. My parents weren’t that impressed, but I was so proud of myself.

I envy that kid sometimes.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#63

Post by snvzz »

_trampeltier wrote: post #55

QBasic was so much fun. Also because pre Internet time, the included help for each command was so good. Just the random number generator was no so good. SCREEN 12 DO x = RND * 640 y = RND * 480 c = RND * 16 r = RND PSET = (x,y),c LOOP enjoy :-) https://imgur.com/a/SSfaewf

What a classic. Definitely done this back in the day, but likely using WHILE or just straight GOTO.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#64

Post by analog31 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #60
analog31 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BASIC was my first language, and today my favorite is Python. Not to claim better worse, but I can think of some differences from a teaching perspective: 1. BASIC was typically either built-in, or accessible via a single command from the disks that came with the computer. Beginners often get lost trying to install Python. If three beginners independently google "install Python" and follow the first blog that comes up…

> you learned a small number of keywords, and everything else had to be composed from them. Python is huge QBASIC has 60+ keywords, Python 3 has 35. > Look at the official list of Python keywords. Half of them describe concepts that are brutal for beginners. Here's the list: False await else import pass None break except in raise True class finally is return and continue for lambda try as def from nonlocal while asse…

Good reply. Maybe the passage of time has smoothed my memory.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#65

Post by schwartzworld »

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.

No way. Qbasic has built in graphics and sound. Putting pixels on the screen is way simpler than python.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#68

Post by viraptor »

Scratch is also pretty good if you need to deal with many kids and can't have a prepared / common experience on devices. I introduced a group of ~12 to programming and the initial issue is that not all of them had consistent access to laptops, or much experience with longer typing.

Being able to start with any tablet was great for that group.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#69

Post by mkovach »

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…

Ahh, the good old 99/4a. I wrote many a game on the best and actually had the Forth cartridge for it. I had a dual drive setup which actually worked into about 3 years ago.

Re: 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

#70

Post by Igelau »

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.

> Just using a subset of Python language you can do anything you need, and with less syntactic noise.

Okay, I'll bite. How does one check for keyboard input without blocking in Python?

And remember, you said "simpler" and "subset", so do your best to avoid imports.

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