Been a while since I saw a new post on here.
Getting started with Qbasic?
Why?
Here's two compelling reasons why you should start learning to code with QBasic 64. Firstly my two kids learned to take their first steps into the world of programming using this medium. Its easy to learn, doesnt involve any ridiculous languages made to try and make the user look smart not just someone that wasted their time learning to speak a new meta language and needing 14 lines of code to say Let A=1
The other, in my own world, I use it to write simple and sometimes very complex programs, databases, media library utilities (in particular my phone and player play list organisation as well as extensions to Spreadsheet and other software I use. Its fast, Its free and is usable pretty much out of the box.
So lets not let this die, it was originally a part of windows till the greedy though oo we can make this into a new meta language and charge people to learn how to do over what they did for free in the past.
Revitalisation
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Re: Revitalisation
Why not?
I haven't used Qbasic 64 before. My computer is still old though. LOL. Just a single core CPU at under 2Ghz on Linux running the original Qbasic in DOSBOX as my test environment.Here's two compelling reasons why you should start learning to code with QBasic 64. Firstly my two kids learned to take their first steps into the world of programming using this medium. Its easy to learn, doesnt involve any ridiculous languages made to try and make the user look smart not just someone that wasted their time learning to speak a new meta language and needing 14 lines of code to say Let A=1
The good news is that the original Qbasic 1.1 is available as part of DOS boot disk images, but if you get QuickBasic 4.0 or 4.5 for DOS, then you can make standalone executable programs that don't require third-party libraries to run.
I embed 32-bit assembly into my DOS qbasic programs. I must say my favorite function call is "Call absolute". I even favor it over "Call InterruptX"The other, in my own world, I use it to write simple and sometimes very complex programs, databases, media library utilities (in particular my phone and player play list organisation as well as extensions to Spreadsheet and other software I use. Its fast, Its free and is usable pretty much out of the box.
The QuickBasic-like thing that is for windows 3.x and up is called Visual Basic. For MS-DOS, its just Qbasic, and QuickBasic. I think the latest version for DOS is QuickBasic 7.0.So lets not let this die, it was originally a part of windows till the greedy though oo we can make this into a new meta language and charge people to learn how to do over what they did for free in the past.
Re: Revitalisation
I still use my 486 and QB4.5 to program in QB. I also have my main computer (Ubuntu) set up with DOSBox so I can also use it there if I want.
I just tried QB64 for the first time today. It's not bad but I feel like the IDE is missing a lot of the debugging stuff that's in QB4.5 for DOS. (I guess that's a side effect of converting the QB code to C++ and then running GCC on it to build the executable). With large programs, being able to add watches, step through and toggle break points for debugging is super helpful. I didn't see anything like that in the QB64 IDE.
I think maybe if I was to get into the newer features it offers, I can see using it over just standard DOS QB but at that point, Free Basic has more features, is quicker, and creates smaller executables.
As for students using it to learn programming basics. I can see that I guess but I'd wager Python would be picked over it as an option as it's relatively simple to get started, current and one of the most popular programming languages these days.
That said, I love QB and will probably be writing trash code in it forever.![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)
I just tried QB64 for the first time today. It's not bad but I feel like the IDE is missing a lot of the debugging stuff that's in QB4.5 for DOS. (I guess that's a side effect of converting the QB code to C++ and then running GCC on it to build the executable). With large programs, being able to add watches, step through and toggle break points for debugging is super helpful. I didn't see anything like that in the QB64 IDE.
I think maybe if I was to get into the newer features it offers, I can see using it over just standard DOS QB but at that point, Free Basic has more features, is quicker, and creates smaller executables.
As for students using it to learn programming basics. I can see that I guess but I'd wager Python would be picked over it as an option as it's relatively simple to get started, current and one of the most popular programming languages these days.
That said, I love QB and will probably be writing trash code in it forever.
![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)
Re: Revitalisation
I very much like PDL (qbasic 7.1) best. I dislike QB64 using the 4.5 interface as I've gotten used to some things it doesn't implement. I'm working on a program right now, a simple 3D maze that has some "monsters" and messages and whatnot. I finished a "hangman" game I altered so instead of centering on death, we fill flower petals with missed letters. Two modes of play: solo - preset phrases to guess; two player - someone types in a phrase. I was really proud of finishing it and really happy when he played it and loved it and wanted to play it more.
These programs are way more portable for what I need, thanks to dosbox, than something like a Blender 3D game, where I need compile pipeline for the target platform (programming on linux isn't too difficult, but building for windows is a hassle). Anyway. I got into qbasic back with W3.1 and really learned how to spaghetti my code. I've gotten into (finally) modular coding and learning how to attach other programs to a main to use as types of libraries.
My kid is playing on a thing called Kano Hub which has some sort of pseudo programming with what looks like simplified javascript (it is nuts about spacing) but he's so happy to be telling a computer how to draw on the screen. I love it. He's also started in on the programming blocks like Scratch. Not sure if it'll let him do overly complex things, but he's still happy with it. I have no idea if he will want to get into programming "for real" as he's still in his instant gratification age, but I'll encourage him as long as he wants to do it. Eventually I'll let him loose on qbasic. Maybe show him how it accepts asm and c code. Create simple html code. Anything, really.
These programs are way more portable for what I need, thanks to dosbox, than something like a Blender 3D game, where I need compile pipeline for the target platform (programming on linux isn't too difficult, but building for windows is a hassle). Anyway. I got into qbasic back with W3.1 and really learned how to spaghetti my code. I've gotten into (finally) modular coding and learning how to attach other programs to a main to use as types of libraries.
My kid is playing on a thing called Kano Hub which has some sort of pseudo programming with what looks like simplified javascript (it is nuts about spacing) but he's so happy to be telling a computer how to draw on the screen. I love it. He's also started in on the programming blocks like Scratch. Not sure if it'll let him do overly complex things, but he's still happy with it. I have no idea if he will want to get into programming "for real" as he's still in his instant gratification age, but I'll encourage him as long as he wants to do it. Eventually I'll let him loose on qbasic. Maybe show him how it accepts asm and c code. Create simple html code. Anything, really.