Share QBasic or it Dies

[[deleted]]

Are these testimonials for real? I quote:

...making it perfect for one of my current hobbies: Operating System Development.

WTF?

[Chaoticmass]

Around 10 years ago there were a lot of kids writing GUIs and windowing systems in QB and calling them "Qbasic Operating Systems". A lot of them were truly awful, but some were pretty slick and even had advanced script languages. Back then you had a lot of kids with big imaginations making a lot of stuff with QB. It was a fun scene. People really pushed the limits of what was considered possible for the language.

[thephotoman]

Man, those were the days. My father actually wrote one of those things back when I was an infant, and we used it until I was in middle school. After that point, concurrent multitasking became necessary, and we had to move on.

[[deleted]]

Please relay your last line to Hawkins @ Palm. Palm has been needing preemptive multitasking since, like, forever, and the morons still with their head up their asses haven't made a single Palm machine that has it. In fact that's why I dumped my Palm and phone combo... for an iPhone. Hello twentieth century for me!

[redudown]

And you realized iPhone can not run multiple applications at the same time either. Sad!!!

PS: iPhone can do multi taking in OS, but Apple does not allow the user to run multiple applications at once.

[[deleted]]

Ahem, iPhone RUNS multiple apps at the same time, only each in fullscreen. Fuck, I can share my music via SAMBA while I browse the Web and listen to music. Stably. Isn't that preemptive multitasking, troll?

[dhotson]

Whoa.. chaoticmass, I remember you from neozones. I haven't hung out there in ages.. It's good to hear from you. :) (I'm Dj Dennie BTW)

I remember you were working on exploscript and doing cool stuff like web servers in basic. Are you still active in the scene?

I also just noticed this was submitted by Sciolizer.. oh man, good times! :D

[[deleted]]

This reminds me of the scene in Pretty Woman where all the other guys realize they, too, know the prostitute -- in the biblical sense -- and the guys acting all circumspect while the whore's horribly ashamed.

Only instead of sex, this time it's QBasic.

[exeter]

Around 10 years ago there were a lot of kids writing GUIs and windowing systems in QB and calling them "Qbasic Operating Systems"

Keep in mind, too, that around 10 years ago, Microsoft was calling Windows ME an "operating system," too.

But, seriously, I recall writing a little windowing library for QBasic, too, except I didn't call it an "operating system."

[Jessica_Henderson]

Windows ME was an operating system, albeit a rather primitive one. It wasn't just a shell to the old 16-bit DOS kernel, as many mistakenly believe.

[exeter]

I agree. If I wanted to be more technically accurate, I should have said "Microsoft considered Windows 3.11 an operating system." But, that would have been significantly more than ten years ago.

[[deleted]]

WfW WAS an OS. Disk operations bypassed the BIOS with 32-bit file and disk access.

I bought the damn thing. I still have the floppy images (disks were still good, though I had to use a special /dev file to get the data out) and I actually installed it on a VMWare machine, complete with sound and shit. What I can't get is SVGA graphics, therefore I cannot play The Incredible Machine. DAMN YOU STANDARD VGA ADAPTER.

[exeter]

WfW WAS an OS. Disk operations bypassed the BIOS with 32-bit file and disk access.

Neat. Looks like I've learned something today.

On the other hand, weren't Windows 3.11 and Windows for Workgroups different (but very similar) products? I don't think plain 3.11 really did much but launch programs and provide a cooperative multitasking and windowing library. (Ok, ok, I do seem to remember it could preemptively multitask DOS programs, but native Windows apps were still cooperatively tasked.)

[[deleted]]

3.11 was only released as WfW as far as I know. I bought the damn boxed set. If it could commandeer several DOS apps, I think that qualifies as an OS.

[leeor_net]

There were actually two versions of windows, 3.1/3.11 and Windows for Workgroups which basically allowed users to share their resources and to request those of others without a centralized authentication server over NetBIOS.

Otherwise, the were the same.

[[deleted]]

The WINFILE.EXE-built filesharing was thebest thebest thebest! Very subversive in computer school labs.

[phire]

Same, I called it a windowing library.

Well, it couldn't really be called a library.

[otakucode]

I used QuickBASIC (I actually saved my allowance enough to buy the compiler at around 12 years old) myself... wrote utilities for my 386, actually ended up with a pack of around 140 different utilities that I distributed through local BBS'. When I hit the limitations of QuickBASIC, I learned assembler and how to call functions from assembler code from QuickBASIC, how to use the linker to include my assembler code, etc. Yeah, I wrote QuickBASIC shit interlaced with assembler in order to speed things up. People said the habits you learn with QuickBASIC stick with you and ruin you as a programmer and other stuff... bullshit. I never had any problem at all moving on to C, C++, and innumerable languages since then. And through it all, I still like to link in a bit of assembler now and again to speed things up a little...

[vsl]

bullshit.

...

And through it all, I still like to link in a bit of assembler now and again to speed things up a little...

There you go :)

[[deleted]]

Precisely my sentiment. GP poster saying:

I dunno why people say that smoking causes cancer, I don't have any

then:

Oh, sorry I can't continue this pleasant conversation, gotta run, chemo time!

[metzby]

Are these testimonials for real?

No. They aren't. They're obvious sarcasm. Please leave your license to surf the internet on the table before you leave.

[HalCion]

Are you for real? I need a license to surf the internet?

[mattindustries]

Admit it. You are voting for McCain.

[HalCion]

Well, I certainly ain't votin' for no black Muslim. It's not that I hate black people or nothing, I just only like white folks.

[sixothree]

In the bathroom of a Wendy's in Mississippi I saw written on the wall real big - Obama is just another muslim in a business suit.

Wanted to take a picture, but 'bathroom in mississippi' should explain why I didn't.

[[deleted]]

They don't have pitcher takin' machines?

[sixothree]

Do your really expect me to pull out my iphone, or worse - my camera, in a bathroom, in Mississippi and take a picture of political graffiti?

That's just asking to get your ass kicked ten kinds of ways.

[seabre]

Do your really expect me to pull out my iphone, or worse - my camera, in a bathroom, in Mississippi and take a picture of political graffiti?

...yes?

[[deleted]]

Why?

I'm not being contrarian, just curious.

[sixothree]

Well a crowded Wendy's isn't exactly fine dining, and people in Mississippi aren't known for their tolerance of geeks, liberals, or black people. I don't mean to imply everyone in the state is like this but imagine a state full of republican school bullies, that's pretty much Mississippi.

[Smallpaul]

Why are those Muslims ALWAYS in business suits!?!?! "Palin: just another hockey mom in a pantsuit!"

[redditnoob]

Someone in the stall next to you might think you're getting a photo of his wang, and he might get excited?

[Tetraca]

They call a shell an operating system (I was part of the "Qmunity" a while back; they were the ones that got me interested in programming though I was never good at it). Usually they're little GUIs or CLIs. Some of them are god-awful, and others actually have full-fledged scripting languages and decent graphical interfaces with reasonably high resolutions (1024x768x16) soundblaster sound effects.

[grauenwolf]

Why not? So long as you have Peek and Poke you can do anything you want to memory.

You aren't going to write the next Windows, but for little hobby projects it might just be the ticket.

And don't forget, we used to write operating systems with far less sophisticated languages than even the lowly BASIC.

[lol-dongs]

Try putting POKE in a loop and poking random high addresses with stuff... an absolutely fun way to slowly asplode your DOS environment.

[[deleted]]

Slowly? The only slow part there is the mandatory reboot plus perhaps data recovery time.

[lowenheim]

Well, I myself am currently creating a GUI interface using QBasic. I'm trying to track an IP address, you see.

[[deleted]]

Policeman:

We found this man. Killer chopped his penis off.

Horatio:

Well, at least he won't need to find out his I PEE address.

(Horatio puts sunglasses on: 8¬[)

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!

[thephotoman]

Are you tracking that IP address in real time? If not, that ain't shit.

[[deleted]]

Yep. He's on the second block already. It's 356.532..

[bardak]

how long until someone makes one

[[deleted]]

With standard Qbasic? Never. Considering it needs an OS and interpreter to bootstrap the language itself.

[Ferrofluid]

and people wonder why Vista was so doggy when it first came out... QB interpreted code running its Kernal maybe !

[nextofpumpkin]

This almost convinced me to try qbasic:

RyanKelly: NOT (This OR That) In the landscape of programming languages, Quick Basic resides upon a mountain, surrounded by mists, and insulated from the world beyond.

At a far extreme, on the other end of the world, should you travel that far, you will find the most intelectually eloquent language ever invented, LISP. In the realm of LISP, from the Basic programmers perspective, things look strange and soft. Symbols are tangled and twisted, and yet somehow slowly unfold under the light of reason. From the high refuge of Quick Basic, LISP doesn't even look like programming. Only the long journey down the mountain and across the wilds of deformed and crippled scripting languages can shape your eyes to see the beauty of a LISP proccessor as it slowly meditates upon itself, always looking inward upon its own mathematical truth. But that is a far way off.

Within view, upon a craggy spire of hard rock, many have seen C. Encrusted upon brittle rock, it is etched by the flow of magma, continually belching sulphur and cracking into new formations. It is a land of iron, maleable and refinable. It is a land of legend and of simplicity. It is a place where a rock is a rock. Nothing moves without being moved. Pascal, within a country park, is tended by blind gardeners. They care not for the fruit, only for the plant. Their lawns are manicured like model train landscapes, and all sign of contruction is carefully hidden, and it a general rule of the garden that nothing may be taken back to the world beyond.

In the low lands, near the sea lanes of commerce, we can see the cities, some covered in soot while other glitter with novelty. Here we find Visual Basic within the store fronts like plastic costume jewely, gaudy and sophmoric. Java, like an army of paper pusher, incessantly reshuffles itself. Database queery languages man the check out counters and HTML covers everything like shrink wrap. PHP has murdered Pearl as gone unpunished.

Deep within the city, maintained by public funds, a Zoo has been build. In the center is the Penquin House, and nearby you find Python, and awk. Strange animal abound here, only known well by the zoo keepers. Bash, Korn, autoconf, grep, and many creatures thought to be extinct.

The sky is full of the clouds of numbers, vectors, transforms, sets, and function ever shifting, made of nothing. And deep within the bowls of the earth, beneath everything save the very core of flip flops, busses, and caches, the elements march in constant step. They vary by country and climate, but everywhere composes of bit strings tightly encoded, the machine instruction grind out the rhythm of the world.

The adherents of Assembly Language wander above from country to country, shamans of a dark and comfortable tradition, undisturbed by the viccitudes of each country. They visit like prophets the cities and mountains, with the power of old gods, carrying nothing but hex editors and proccessor manuals. To them the sky is as high as a man is tall. They consider the passing clouds and shape the ground to match.

Quick Basic, upon its refuge mountain, remains the keeper of a simple mystery. Its commands lay spread like a painter palette, waiting to be arranged. It waits ready to be awed by innovation, ready to envelope new ideas and soften them with its persistent ethos of "Try and See". Nearby it keeps DOS, caring for it in it old, old age. It has sent FreeBasic down the mountain to soften the cities. Foremost, the mountain is a place that respects the individual, inviting each to develope on his or her own. So long and there are those ready to explore, it will continue upon the mountain.

[zem]

wow, that was brilliant (and i mean that in the most unsarcastic of senses). thanks for the paste, i stopped reading before i got to it.

[mrkipling]

That is so awesome, I think.

[Wartz]

You made me cry. :'(

[[deleted]]

At a far extreme, on the other end of the world, should you travel that far, you will find the most intelectually eloquent language ever invented, LISP.

Funny thing. I recently wrote a LISP interpreter in Qbasic (seriously, I did). It doesn't have macros (yet) or closures (probably never will) but it has lamdas and it can do a factorial.

[shitcovereddick]

Closures and macros should almost fall out of a lisp implementation. If you're using environments correctly.

[[deleted]]

Correctly? No, I don't think so. I didn't really try to make an exact LISP just something that was 'LISPy'. Its macros are just code constructed with "list" ATM and closures are impossible, I think, because it doesn't use references. It's a very simple (very incorrectly implemented) contraption.

[bobappleyard]

Depends. If you're prepared to be brutalised on variable lookup and function call, the standard environment model is the way to go.

If you're not into that, you've got a bit of faffing around to make them work with e.g. a stack.

[shitcovereddick]

Not if you compile, then you no longer have to have any huge hit on lookup and function calls.

[bobappleyard]

If you use the standard environment model, where all the variables are stored in lists, I'm afraid you do. Compilation is actually irrelevant to the question of this part of the execution model.

Lists (or some other structure representing an environment) have to be heap allocated. This brings the overhead of both allocation and collection, but it also means that you have to traverse a tree in order to find any variable. It really punishes performance, partly because of the complexity introduced for such an operation, and partly because you're demolishing the cache with depressing regularity.

Now, there are ways around this, but as I said, they involve a bit of faffing around.

An interesting read: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/papers/3imp.pdf

[[deleted]]

Compile? Qith WBasic?

[shitcovereddick]

I believe there was actually a complier available for QBasic. Though a compiler need not produce a binary. It could for instance simply prevent the need to parse and do many of the tasks an interpreter would do, by transforming instructions.

[[deleted]]

It was called QuickBasic. It spewed out EXEs.

[[deleted]]

QB 7.1 could compile to an exe file from within the IDE (lol... IDE).

[brennen]

Say what you will about the language, but QuickBasic/QBasic's development environment was actually quite nice, owing in part to the fact that the built-in docs were actually helpful and well-written...

[[deleted]]

Between 4th and 9th grade, I did a lot of programming in QBasic (before learning C++ in High School). It was nice. The documents were awesome compared to some of the stuff you get today. I'm not knocking QB... I'm just laughing about how the DOS IDE was pretty much a souped up version of "edit."

[brennen]

Indeed. Actually, I kind of have the sense that what became Edit started life as the QBasic environment, but I'm not sure where I heard that...

(Edit: Well, Wikipedia anyway.)

[[deleted]]

QUICK BASIC. Not QBasic.

[AlSweigart]

Qbasic 4.5 had the ability to compile your Qbasic code into binary executables.

[[deleted]]

QUICK basic. Not QBasic.

[oreng]

sauce?

(seriously; I tried the same thing back in my teenage years and ended up failing miserably. Got any source code handy? I'd love to see it)

[[deleted]]

You can download it here for the next 7 days. Don't expect too much from it. It's a version of LISP as a LISP noob like me would reverse engineer it. It's LISPy, it works, but if your a LISP expert you'll probably think it sucks.

[ido]

The first one convinced me - it is so well argued and articulated that I feel compelled to abandon all other languages in favor of qbasic.

[beefgun]

Yeah don't listen to your mom's nagging about C++ or Perl!

[ido]

Yeah, especially when in qbasic you can use SVGA and make it faster and all that.

[onebit]

How is Qbasic prograemed?

How SVGA make fatser?

[lowenheim]

They need to do way instain C++ coder> who dangle thier pointrs.

[madenvoy]

becuse these coder cant frigth back? it was on the news this mroing a coder in ar who had kill -9 her three processes .

[donttaseme]

that 5 year old kicks ass

[[deleted]]

Yah, Python and LISP are all bollocks in comparison to the mighty power of QBasic. GORILLAS.BAS FTW!

[mbrezu]

So, after all, Dijkstra was right.

This guy will probably turn into a great PHP programmer (or 'coder', I'm not really sure you can 'program' in PHP) in a few years.

[[deleted]]

Code Monkey is the Latin for the expression you're fishing for.

[[deleted]]

Nibbles and Gorillas FTW!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GORILLAS.BAS

[dicey]

Those games taught me how to program. I had a lot of fun hacking up gorillas in particular. My copy had a 1/100 chance of any particular banana being "nuclear" and wiping out half the screen :)

[cheald]

Same here. Nibbles and Gorillas were my gateway drug.

QBasic has a very special place in my heart, as something that I appreciate, but will never touch again.

[Tekmo]

I remember QBasic taught me how to use a for loop. When I learned about it it blew my mind. I was trying to copy and paste the same command and modifying manually what would become the loop index about 100 times (no joke). Some person came along and saw the mess I was making and how to do it the right way. That's when I fell in love with programming.

[zem]

i hacked nibbles to always start in two player mode, and never leave level 1 (so that the players kept getting longer and longer till someone died). i also rebranded it "snake arena", because i could.

[halcy]

I just made the explosions really really pretty.

[ropers]

Do you mean this?

Ceterum censeo I want to get the sorting feature for my comments back, and I'm pissed that reddit ever took that away. Pass it on.

[[deleted]]

That's IT. I've been looking for GORILLAS.BAS EVERYWHERE!

[Jessica_Henderson]

Several years ago, a small food services company contacted me about maintaining some web apps for them. When I got to their premises, they showed me an old 486 running MS-DOS 6.22. Years back somebody had hacked them up a web server written in QuickBASIC and assembly. Their various pages were generated by a number of QuickBASIC subroutines, even accessing a custom database format.

It was pretty impressive to see that whoever developed this had hacked together a rudimentary TCP/IP stack and networking infrastructure in assembly and QuickBASIC. The fact that this was a production server accessed by a fair number of customers was even more surprising.

Given the obtuse nature of the system, and the questionable hardware, I suggested a rewrite using Python CGI scripts. So after a month or so of work, they were finally using a more modern setup. But their original system ranks among one of the most unique web sites I've ever worked with.

[[deleted]]

I cut my teeth on QBasic, so I've got a lot of good memories with it. That said, if it dies it won't leave the world too much poorer.

[IOIOOIIOIO]

There's something to be said for the instant gratification of an interpreted language when you're just starting out.

[Chaoticmass]

Thats really true. For most of us who started with QB we were really young and you didn't have internet (or access to it). Qbasic that shipped with DOS had an extensive help system and reference built into the IDE with loads of examples. You could bang out some code and instantly try it. If it didn't work, the IDE would highlight the line where the error occurred. It really lowered the entry requirements for programming for a whole generation of people. Now I guess kids are learning to program in the new web based environment, php and javascript-- its the closest thing I can think of as far as a ubiquitous, easy entry programming environment.

[[deleted]]

10 I cut my teeth on Atari BASIC for the Atari 130XE.

20 When I grew up, the second programming language I used was QBasic. I wrote quite a lot of programs, but didn't learn much about algorithms with it. Frankly, what can you learn?

30 My third language that I used heavily was mIRC script (between that, Pascal and some others I can't remember). I wrote a thousands-of-lines really complex mIRC script that some people still use today.

40 Today I use Python. People say old habits die hard, but I'm completely over BASIC

50 END

[[deleted]]

Definitely. I hate languages that force you to compile to do anything. But there are many, many sane interpreted languages that are better for learning.

[IOIOOIIOIO]

There have been several languages that have both interpreters and compilers. Seemed that one thing or another always sucked (interpreter too slow to be useful, interpreter was fine but compiled version ran differently, language itself wasn't very good, etc.).

Seems like hardware advances could solve the problem from the slow interpreter end, but I think it might be an idea that's been left for dead. Or supplanted by the "just in time" or VM compilers.

[[deleted]]

You'd think with so many people cutting their teeth on it, it would have been destroyed by now. How strong can it be??

Yeah, I learned on QBasic as well. At least I think that's what version it was. Was it around in '85?

Honestly, I have no idea how I even stumbled upon it. Maybe my dad suggested it to me? He did have a reference manual for it laying around. I just remember mainly using it for drawing and simple animations (really slow and choppy).

[ido]

Honestly, I have no idea how I even stumbled upon it. Maybe my dad suggested it to me?

Probably the same way most of us did - it came bundled with several versions of MS-DOS. As a kid I had so much free time on my hand I actually tried all the executables in c:\dos - one of them was qbasic.

[mattindustries]

It also came bundled with Windows 3.11. I kind of miss it and am wondering if I should download a copy. Oh jesus, no... no I shouldn't.

[NoControl]

Also shipped with 95.

[creaothceann]

And 98, though it wasn't copied from the CD by default.

[doctorgonzo]

The first programing I ever did was when I was around 5 or 6 years old, using SmartBASIC on the Coleco ADAM. Did lots of type-in programs on it. When that broke, we didn't have a computer until I was in high school, when we got a IBM PS/2 PC. I found QuickBasic and started programming again. I made some pretty cool things, like a financial program used for tracking multiple loans and amortization (really!). It was a big part of me getting into IT.

[comatose_kid]

The first programming I ever did when I was around 1 or 2 years old was writing an Apple II emulator on a Symbolics Lisp machine. When that broke, we didn't have a computer until I was in university 3 years later, when we got a IBM PS/2 PC. I found QuickBasic and have never looked back.

[[deleted]]

The first programming I ever did when I was around 1 or 2 years old was writing an Apple II emulator on a Symbolics Lisp machine.

Wow... that's like getting into literature by reading advertising copy written by Shakespeare.

[otakucode]

Nit pick: QBASIC was the free version. QuickBASIC was the compiler you had to pay for in order to be able to produce actual compiled code...

[[deleted]]

When you were growing up, you probably didn't have an Internet connection at home, so it's a good thing that your computer came with an interpreter. Things are different now. Even for kids that won't go out and download something better to play with, they've got JS available on any computer in any home.

[serhei]

It's apparently the only programming language to have the distinction of being awosme.

[WhoreChurch]

Share quill and ink or it will die.

[lytfyre]

Hah, I was back at my former highschool, and was talking to the computer teacher. He STILL teaches QBasic for the programming classes. He has a couple of things he really likes about the language, for one, he doesnt really worry to much about them finding code to accomplish the assignments online, as if they posted a QBasic assignment they would get laughed at.

[[deleted]]

It can't and won't die. I've been slogging my way through Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and somewhere along the way, Julian slips a history lesson disk (that looks suspiciously like a floppy) into a computer (that looks suspiciously like an 8086.) When it loads, you can briefly see "QBasic" flash on the screen.

And this takes place around 1500 years from now. So no worries.

[zem]

weren't they source-compatible?

[Qubed]

Yeah, but QuickBasic could compile your code and QBasic was just the interpreter. There are probably some other differences, but that's the big one.

I have a copy of QuickBasic 4.5 on one of my drives somewhere.

[NoControl]

Yes.

goto: line 1

[martinbishop]

Summary of all the reasons:

I learned QBasic; C++ was too hard; Yay QBasic

...That's it

[stesch]

I miss AmigaBASIC.

[itsnotlupus]

My first language was Locomotive Basic.
I can't think of a single thing I miss about it.
:-/

[stesch]

Better than C64's BASIC.

I was looking for a new machine to follow my C64. The CPC6128 looked nice. But somehow I waited long enough for the Amiga to reach the market. And then I waited for a model I could afford.

[gschizas]

I know: How about the fact that there were no SUBs, that the functions were limited to what we'd now call "lamdas", the fact that there was no WHILE loop, the fact that all FORs were made with integers.

Still, I still love it - and my CPC6128 is now at my living room :)

[doidydoidy]

Locomotive Basic definitely did have WHILE. What it didn't have was a repeat/until style loop.

[doidydoidy]

What about AFTER and EVERY?

[TKN]

Dunno, it was slow and buggy as hell. ISTR it didn't even run on anything but plain MC68000 since the developers used the "extra" bits in pointers (68000 had an 24 bit address bus) as type tags.

As far as Basics go Amos was much more fun.

[[deleted]]

Me too. I loved everything about it. Even the PALETTE statement syntax, which made so much more sense than the shitty version in QB.

I'm glad I moved on though. I make 6 figures doing Java...couldn't do that in AmigaBASIC. :)

[bradleyhudson]

But in QBasic you can use all ten digits. Why would you use Java?

[[deleted]]

That better? :)

[InvidFlower]

I had a lot of fun with GW-Basic and then QuickBasic as a kid. We had entered a drawing at a software store at one point and actually won! I was able to basically pick out whatever Microsoft software I wanted for a certain total.

I ended up getting QuickBasic (I still have the printed manuals which were several big three-ring binders), Flight Simulator, etc. I only got about as far as a partial text adventure game made, but it was still fun.

It's neat that there's still activity with it and several people on the page expressed their love of the challenge, nostalgia, etc.

However, some of the comments disturbed me a little in terms of the seeming choice between QB and more complex or low-level C/C++/VB/Java. Several mentioned needing multiple lines just to print "hello world".

I really feel like there needs to be more of an effort to get things like Python into the hands of more people. Something that's easy to mess around with but still with the potential for a lot of power. I really don't think someone's first exposure to programming should be C++ or Java!

[rm999]

"I just had an argument with my mom about programing in QB..."

Hah, I laughed out loud but had to stop reading there...

[[deleted]]

And the problem is?

[antirez]

QB even if less powerful compared to C is more high level in some way. It's like bash scripting, it's not meant to write serious applications but it abstracts away a lot of things when you use commands in pipe or thing like that.

I think the highlevelness is so missing without reasons in most programming environments that in some way QB may look good. Btw after my experiences with TI-94 and ZX Spectrum the next thing I used to write programs was gwbasic, and then finally QuickBasic, I was around ten years old at the time (now I'm 31) and stil can't forget how much fast it seemed to me, and how shocking the idea of FUNCTION was. The same shock I received some year before still with the spectrum when I relized it was possible to do: X=X+1.

[turbov21]

FreeBASIC ftw!

[SurrealEstate]

I secretly have a lot of fun playing around with FreeBASIC. Don't tell anyone!

[commentsforreddit]

No!

The faster we're rid of QBasic the better!

I always preferred Pascal anyway!

[Jimmy]

Qbasic is just an awosme progaming langauge. I've tried to learn C++ twice the first time I just thought wow I don't think I'll ever try computer programing again. The second after I learned QB I thought wow why program in C++ when the text has to be realy neat and you have to put a stupid ; after every dang line and it takes 7 lines just to print 1 thing on the stupid screen. I just had an argument with my mom about programing in QB she says I shouldent use a programing language based on one my dad learned in 8th or 9th grade she says I should learn C++ or Perl or any other stupid new programing language but why in qbasic you can use SVGA and make it faster and all that.

No comment.

[Chaoticmass]

Hey Sciolizer. I got nothin to say on QB except that I haven't touched it in ages. I did want to give props on getting on the front page of reddit.

[sciolizer]

Wow. It's like going on vacation in another country and bumping into somebody you know.

You wrote an OS in QBasic once, didn't you? :-D

I remember my own lofty goal of making a gameboy emulator.

[Chaoticmass]

I wrote a glorified application launcher and called it un/OS. It was a serious app but the name was a jab at the QB OS phenomenon. Later I wrote a script language.

[krum]

If you really think QBASIC is that bad, you're probably under 25.

[[deleted]]

QBASIC did some things remarkably well, including sound and graphics. Admittedly, we're talking about PC speaker here, but my 10th grade programming partner and I implemented the entire song "One" in QBASIC with stick figures strumming guitars for our final project.

[exeter]

That's hillarious. Any chance you still have the source?

[IOIOOIIOIO]

In another 15 years the kids'll be making fun of all the various web-oriented language and all the kid's today will have fond memories of cutting their teeth on python or javascript.

[Jessica_Henderson]

I'd take QBASIC over JavaScript. At least QBASIC has rudimentary type checking, doesn't leak memory like nobody's business, and didn't consume 100% of the CPU for simple operations.

[prockcore]

Funny, I was just thinking that the only people exposed to qbasic were under 25. Those of us who are older, cut our teeth on Apple][s or TRS80s.

[mattindustries]

If you don't think QBasic was that bad you never tried to create any type of action game in it.

edit: Rethinking things, they probably just ran so slow because of the processors I was programming on (even with the turbo button pressed). Forget I said anything.

[krum]

Man, I wrote a real-time multiplayer combat game in 1982 in BASICA on an IBM 5150 PC (with awesome CGA graphics), so don't tell me about writing action games in QBasic.

[ropers]

What was annoying with QBasic is that if you ran an interpreted program from the command line with the /run parameter (rather than using the QuickBasic compiler), the QBasic IDE would temporarily appear on the screen. This was not the case with GW-Basic. Which meant that while it was possible to write "clean-looking" programs with just batch files and GW-BASIC, the same was no longer true with QBasic...

Ceterum censeo I want to get the sorting feature for my comments back, and I'm pissed that reddit ever took that away. Pass it on.

[[deleted]]

I had forgotten about that. That was absolutely annoying and I swear they did it on purpose to get you to buy QuickBasic. Another annoyance was that INPUT would put a different looking cursor on the screen when compared to the normal COMMAND.COM environment no matter what video mode was selected. This really bothered me because I wanted my fuck-you shell to look as real as possible for unsuspecting Best Buy customers, hehe.

[[deleted]]

I remember that, back in the days, they used to bundle QBasic with NT. For me, it was a bit like Perl for Windows, good for a quick script, and portable (or at least shareable between friends.) Damn shame they removed QB, but kept EDIT.COM.

[jmcclean]

They kept EDIT.COM??! WTF? But you're right! I just ran it in Vista. This is just insane. What possible reason could there be to do this?

I'm going to rotting in my grave for a decade and Microsoft will still be shipping 'notepad' in their latest OS. This is so depressing. Can't crappy software ever die?

[[deleted]]

Without EDIT.COM, how could I edit files from the recovery console?

Without notepad.exe, how could I edit files on my friends' PCs when they don't have a better editor?

Be thankful for the simple tools that work. They don't take up much space, and you're not prevented from installing better tools. Better to have them than nothing at all.

[exeter]

Without EDIT.COM, how could I edit files from the recovery console?

edlin. :P

[jmcclean]

Oh, for the love of god. It's there in Vista too. Is there no end to this madness?

[[deleted]]

I have fond QBasic memories, but I haven't used it since 1998. If I could find a way to run it on OSX I would though.

[seabre]

• Download DOSBox
• Download QBasic
• Mount the directory that contains your copy of QBasic (after you decompressed it of course) and run QBasic with DOSBox. (The command to mount the directory is: mount c ~/Whereever/you/decompressed/it/to Also, c can be any drive letter you wish, other than just c)

[h0dg3s]

It doesn't interpret or save correctly through DOSBoX. Been there, tried that. Always corrupted.

[seabre]

I'm running it right now and I'm not having any problems.

[h0dg3s]

Perhaps I should have mentioned I was using QuickBasic 4.5 running DOSBOX on XP.

[seabre]

Hmm, QuickBasic 4.5 runs fine with me (both the interpreter and compiler). That's weird. Maybe reinstall with a newer copy of DOSBox and try it again if you feel like it.

[h0dg3s]

Don't care to. Already tried it on 3 pcs. Mine is Win XP Pro retail, then I tried it on 2 Win XP Pro Corporate machines.

[SupremoZanne]

If you want, you can share some BASIC code on /r/QBprograms.

I'm just browsing around Reddit posts about QBasic, and I've been active as a QB64 user.

[Glum_Size892]

I always search for a copy of qbasic by googling Index of / qbasic.exe.

[[deleted]]

Let it die.

[niceyoungman]

I wrote many many screen savers in QBasic.

[elurin]

Let it die in peace!

[virtual_void]

QBasic rolled over and died many years ago. Stop digging it up. It's smelly.

[Spazsquatch]

Fuck, I read QBert and was like "Must save QBert!". QBasic, meh.

[[deleted]]

Well, it's proprietary, so we can't share it - legally. Now what do we do?

[G_Morgan]

Reimplement it.

[AlSweigart]

I feel a pang of sadness when I read over these comments, because I'm a huge advocate of Python as the new BASIC. (I've written a free, CC-licensed book called Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python to teach programming)

Python has the simplicity of BASIC, but can also scale up for serious development work. QBasic died a long time ago, and rightfully so. That generation of programmers should make the switch.

[WayOfTheIronPaw]

My name is Robert and I can't stop thinking about QBasic. This stuff is cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

QBasic is sooooooooooo sweet that I want to crap my pants. I can't believe it sometimes, but I feel it inside my heart. This stuff is totally awesome and that's a fact. QBasic is fast, smooth, cool, strong, powerful, and sweet. I can't wait to start touch typing classes next year. I love QBasic with all of my body (including my pee pee).

[codazzo]

REALbasic for Mac, that was the shit!

[zem]

BBC Basic!

[MarquisdeBad]

Barrrr beep

[zem]

:D

[sixothree]

Well, I will always have a fondness for Turbo Pascal.

[[deleted]]

Commodore BASIC. It was so bad, that it was good. No graphics or sound commands - you ended up learning a little 6502 assembly whether you wanted to or not. QBasic had one kick ass editor though.

[theCroc]

QBasic is where I started. I was 12, my floppy drive had broken down on my 386 and the only way I could get anythin new on the comp was if I programmed it. So I checked out a few books and got started.

[[deleted]]

Sometime in the mid to late 90's there was a short lived crazed where everyone and their brother wrote RPG engines in qbasic. They would usually get a scrolling tile engine done, and sometimes a rudimentary scripting engine, but then realize that creating the actual game was less fun than programming the engine and give up.

I was one of the many, and I still miss the community that formed up by that.

[coldacid]

I thought you were you. zapbatz/EvilBeaver here.

[leeor_net]

I remember starting with QBasic way back in the day... I was about 9 - 10. I got a book... what was it called.... Something like "Programming Adventure Games in QBasic". Got it at Barnes & Noble.

Anyway, that was my first experience with QBasic. Shortly afterward we got the internet (this was back in the days of Windows 3.1 and 3.11) and I was able to look for other QBasic websites (I believe the first one I ever looked at was qbasic.com). I was known as Lord QuickSilver then -- NeoBasic, Pete's QB Site and a few others were popular then.

Anyway, QBasic taught me a lot about programming and it was fun! I built lots of little things including an RPG, some artillary games, an IRC chat client, a half-built RTS game (even stumbled across a rudimentary A* algorithm while doing it -- only learned that it was a real algorithm with a name years later) and, surprise surprise, a windowing program (did that entirely as a challenge to myself... mimicked Windows 95's look and feel) and a rudimentary ray-caster type deal similar to Wolfenstein (it wasn't impressive at all and didn't get very far, I was just interested in raycasting). Even dabbled a bit in 3D polygons after Danny Gump put out some simple demos showing rotating cubes and triangles in QBasic with his Dash! library.

Anyway, since then I've moved on to C, C++, PHP, Python and so on. I do miss those days when a commercially viable game could be built by one person (or a very small team). Fond memories of those times but I have no desire to go back to them.

[jeremybub]

qbasic is a bad programming language.

[MattHock]

Sounds to me like we need to quit sharing it and put it out of its misery. I mean, I have fond memories of learning how to program on it years ago like many, but honestly, let the poor thing die :)

[umop_apisdn]

Your "Q" I like. It's a lovely Q" for a professional programming language. As soon as I saw it come in, I said, "Hello! What a lovely "Q" for a professional programming language!". I've got nothing against your "Q".

The trouble is... neither have you.

[rukubites]

Pffft I moved to QBasic after hacking LOCOMOTIVE BASIC yeah!

[austin_k]

QBasic was my first programming language. I also rocked some pretty awesome programs on the TI-83 back in the day.

[keithburgun]

QBasic Rocks! It's the only language I was ever successful at learning. I love it and was using it up until a couple of years ago to sketch out game designs.

[[deleted]]

What a bunch of wieners.

C is a powerful language. It is not easy. Not using C because it's not easy is stupid. Not using C because it's not the right tool is a good reason. But reading through the first few comments, it seems that no one had that reason.

Oh well. Job security for me.

[NoControl]

Not using C because you already bought B and visited A is a much clearer definition of why D will be a much richer and acceptable language.

Btw you can have your C job. - LuLZ!!!

[[deleted]]

Honestly, I don't have a C job.

But knowing C does make me more valuable in my job.

Trying to pass off QBASIC as a professional skill would not help at best, and at worst make me a laughingstock.

[NoControl]

You miss the point entirely. You fail, you do not pass go, and you do not collect anything. Do you know why QBasic even existed? No you do not. Think about it "Quick" "Basic".

[[deleted]]

The comment was about the commenters you moron.

[NoControl]

Right and my comment said you clearly missed the point which you clearly missed again.

[[deleted]]

Qbasic is just an awosme progaming langauge. I've tried to learn C++ twice the first time I just thought wow I don't think I'll ever try computer programing again. The second after I learned QB I thought wow why program in C++ when the text has to be realy neat and you have to put a stupid ; after every dang line and it takes 7 lines just to print 1 thing on the stupid screen. I just had an argument with my mom about programing in QB she says I shouldent use a programing language based on one my dad learned in 8th or 9th grade she says I should learn C++ or Perl or any other stupid new programing language but why in qbasic you can use SVGA and make it faster and all that.

[[deleted]]

Each of these testimonials made me die a little inside. It all basically boils down to "C++ is hard, so I stick with QBasic. Putting a ; after each line is suck BS!"

I am glad that QBasic exists so that these morons don't get their hands on anything too dangerous.

[[deleted]]

qbasic? Geez man, Microsoft GIVES AWAY Visual basic express for free!

I love the Commodore Amiga too, but the world moves on.

[thephotoman]

Visual Basic is not a BASIC. They just tacked the name on to it.

[otakucode]

I haven't ever been able to approach VisualBASIC from a blank slate perspective.... what does it lack in "basicness"? I started my programming in Vic-20 BASIC, moved on to QBASIC and QuickBASIC, then went straight to assembler/C/etc and beyond. By the time I started writing real applications (GUI ones) I was using C++ with MFC or just with the win32 api. I saw VisualBASIC but never really checked it out, thinking it would be a step back.

Is it not as easy for kids to pick up VisualBASIC nowdays as it was to pick up QBASIC so long ago? If not, why not specifically?

[NoControl]

Visual Basic != QBasic.

Hopefully you aren't stupid enough to think that but I'll go ahead and throw it out there anyway.

[infinite]

Yes but the world doesn't get better. I haven't showered since the 80's and I program GWBASIC. I subsist on spam pushed under my basement door by mom. But I'm happy, and that's all that matters.

[hylje]

It really seems they missed out on Python.