Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:49:08 GMT
BASIC, the Beginner's All-Purpose Symbol Instruction Code, may not be the best tribe of programming languages, but it has brought a few programming languages that were quite nice for scriptkiddies.
For me, the main reason for using a computer was that I wanted to learn programming. And DOS had a QuickBasic-Interpreter, called QBasic. This interpreter had an excellent documentation, documenting most of the calls. This was perfect for me, since I didnt have to buy any book and could learn it myself by searching through the documentation, and could do my own experiments, and get my own expierience.
And it had a few example programs, like a Snake-game named "Nibbles", from which it was easy to "steal" code.
Though, it had a few drawbacks. For example, there are ASCII-Characters which couldnt be printed by its "Print"-Command. And there was no possibility to use the mouse. Later, I got a book about x86-assembler, which hat a table of MS-Dos-Interrupts. And I got a newer version, QuickBasic 4.5, which also had a compiler, and hat an instruction named Call Interrupt, which could be used to call MS-Dos-Interrupts. With that, I could write my own Print-Command that supported all characters, and could use the mouse. Later, when I finally got an internet connection, I found a lot of stuff, like the 3d-Game "Return To Marchfeld".
Still, there seem to be many people who like QBasic. Thats not surprising. Its a simple language with a lot of things the usual child wants to have. Many software and code can be found under my favourite site for that topic, QBasic.de (which is german, but should be quite understandable through google translate).
Well, meanwhile, all of this is not that interesting anymore. It is trivial to use the mouse, it is trivial to print every unicode-character, it is trivial to create 3d-images. But at that time, this was new to me. It was a nice world to explore, and I am not sure if such a thing still exists today, because most languages simply have default libraries for everything that can be done without further reading. And Basic seems dead to me, anyway - seems like some people still use Visual Basic, or VB Script, but the last time I saw it it was not even comparable to what QBasic was, at least in my opinion.
For me, the main reason for using a computer was that I wanted to learn programming. And DOS had a QuickBasic-Interpreter, called QBasic. This interpreter had an excellent documentation, documenting most of the calls. This was perfect for me, since I didnt have to buy any book and could learn it myself by searching through the documentation, and could do my own experiments, and get my own expierience.
And it had a few example programs, like a Snake-game named "Nibbles", from which it was easy to "steal" code.
Though, it had a few drawbacks. For example, there are ASCII-Characters which couldnt be printed by its "Print"-Command. And there was no possibility to use the mouse. Later, I got a book about x86-assembler, which hat a table of MS-Dos-Interrupts. And I got a newer version, QuickBasic 4.5, which also had a compiler, and hat an instruction named Call Interrupt, which could be used to call MS-Dos-Interrupts. With that, I could write my own Print-Command that supported all characters, and could use the mouse. Later, when I finally got an internet connection, I found a lot of stuff, like the 3d-Game "Return To Marchfeld".
Still, there seem to be many people who like QBasic. Thats not surprising. Its a simple language with a lot of things the usual child wants to have. Many software and code can be found under my favourite site for that topic, QBasic.de (which is german, but should be quite understandable through google translate).
Well, meanwhile, all of this is not that interesting anymore. It is trivial to use the mouse, it is trivial to print every unicode-character, it is trivial to create 3d-images. But at that time, this was new to me. It was a nice world to explore, and I am not sure if such a thing still exists today, because most languages simply have default libraries for everything that can be done without further reading. And Basic seems dead to me, anyway - seems like some people still use Visual Basic, or VB Script, but the last time I saw it it was not even comparable to what QBasic was, at least in my opinion.