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BASIC is alive and well. It is actually a pretty damn fast and powerful language these days.

We wouldn't need things like Jurassic World if we had decent tools that helped us overcome whatever handicaps we have in making decent content ourselves. However there is plenty of free work out there legally already that I personally don't need Jurassic World.
http://www.qb64.net/forum/
http://sourceforge.net/directo...
http://freebasic.net/forum/

I'm going to celebrate by making each of my kids write a simple program in BASIC. They can start on 4/20 and have to be complete by 4/30.

It's how I got started by gum and if it was good enough for me, and it was, than it's good enough for them!

http://www.freebasic.net/

As mentioned elsewhere, there's not much better than having Real Engineers go on sales calls, too, to answer the technical questions. You can teach salesmen all you want, but they won't be able to fake the insight gained through experience.

All salesmen should have some familiarity with the industry they're marketing to, though. They should have an understanding of how a programmer's mind works, and how your product makes the customers' lives better. For that, I recommend BASIC more than anything else. Not VB, mind you, but good ol' BASIC:

• It's (usually) plain English. There are few abbreviations, and most structures read as a straightforward sentence. That helps to keep focus on general structures and concepts rather than syntax details.
• No overhead. There is no boilerplate necessary to just make something that runs. That means that your first lessons can cover things like "the program runs one step at a time, in order," which is a lesson often missed in many introductory courses, and not obvious to many non-programmer folks.
• Most structures (depending on version), in simple form. No, you likely won't find multithreading, but you can show a function call, loops, conditionals, variables, objects, and most other programming elements just fine, and without needing much other syntax to make a demonstration program. Pick a flavor of BASIC that includes features supported by your product, for illustration.
• No practical application. This is a bit of a lie that really should be told to all students. Make it clear from the start that they should never attempt to write a "real" program in BASIC, not because it's impossible, but because there are far better languages out there. Toward the end of the lessons, start introducing them (especially C/C++, since it's what your customers use). Use that as a leaping-off point to show that all languages are functionally similar.

Once the run-through with BASIC is complete, you can expect the salesmen to understand how to read a simple (and commented!) program, and work out what it does. Show them equivalent programs written in C, C++, and BASIC. Be sure to point out how your product makes life easier, and show how a competitor (or Notepad) doesn't, tying in the lesson with the ultimate goal of making better salesmen.

You definitely won't be producing any great programmers, but you'll give them a glimpse of the mental juggling we do. They'll be able to recognize common use among customers, and possibly even impress a few with their knowledge. That's enough to significantly improve their relationship with the potential customer.

FreeBASIC. It's a compiler though, not an interpreter, which is much better because you can distribute binaries. I've used it to whip up little internet applications that as an .exe are a lot easier for end users than a .pl or .php. If you want an IDE, try fbedit, which is of course written in FreeBASIC.

I don't think it should be that difficult to translate BASIC, just as a teaching tool for non-English societies.

Say, takes something like http://www.freebasic.net/ , and change the string constants for FOR, WHILE, PRINT, etc. to something in your own language.

MS used to have localized Office Basic.

in these modern times with object-oriented multithreaded programming, BASIC is kind of a throwback, don't you think?
 
Why do you think that? BASIC is simple, straight-forward and relatively easy to learn. There are all kinds of "old-time" BASIC programmers around and lots of professional code has been written in BASIC over the years. A lot of programming (even today) involves simple string handling and reading/writing to a file; there's no requirement for fancy front-ends with lots of buttons for a lot of business- or system-oriented programming.
 
I'm a big fan of BASIC, personally, and wish there was a really good console-oriented BASIC compiler or interpreter available for Linux.
 
Yes, I know about Freebasic and Gambas but both of those are striving to be an object-oriented fancy thing that doesn't bear a lot of resemblance to traditional BASIC.
 
Actually, BAS comes about the closest to my idea of what a BASIC interpreter should be. A few additional features like local variables, named subroutines and a $include directive to provide a simple Makefile-like capability would make it a real contender for serious BASIC programming on Linux. Sadly, the chap who wrote BAS doesn't seem to be too interested in that.

and with modern dialects like FreeBASIC, you can write good, modular, maintainable programs.

Yes, and you can also slam your dick in a car door - it's just painful and not recommended, much like trying to write good programs in BASIC. Have you seen some of the turds featured on the FreeBASIC site? For example, this one:

http://www.freebasic.net/index.php/details?page=gallery&category=app&id=3

Re: the UI there - the goggles, they do nothing! I think teaching a kid that that's an acceptable user interface may count as child abuse in some states...

OK, so it doesn't have "teh s3xy" of Java, Python, or Ruby -- but BASIC is very easy to pick up, and with modern dialects like FreeBASIC, you can write good, modular, maintainable programs. It's also a lot of fun, which seems to be especially important; you can write a quick simulation of whatever you're interested in, without a lot of work.

This isn't your father's BASIC; it has support for lots of memory, 32-bit graphics, user data types, functions and subroutines (including passing by reference or value), and even multithreading including mutexes. Or you could use it to run older QBasic programs from the Dark Ages, complete with line numbers, LET statements, GOTOs, and all that.

Pick up FBIDE while you're there, too.

...Oh, and did I mention that both FreeBASIC and FBIDE are free?

OK, so it doesn't have "teh s3xy" of Java, Python, or Ruby -- but BASIC is very easy to pick up, and with modern dialects like FreeBASIC, you can write good, modular, maintainable programs. It's also a lot of fun, which seems to be especially important; you can write a quick simulation of whatever you're interested in, without a lot of work.

This isn't your father's BASIC; it has support for lots of memory, 32-bit graphics, user data types, functions and subroutines (including passing by reference or value), and even multithreading including mutexes. Or you could use it to run older QBasic programs from the Dark Ages, complete with line numbers, LET statements, GOTOs, and all that.

Pick up FBIDE while you're there, too.

...Oh, and did I mention that both FreeBASIC and FBIDE are free?

Take a look at http://www.freebasic.net/, they sort of continued in the original BASIC path with some modern enhancements. I use it at work for the occasional quick and dirty job.

BASIC is usually used because it was designed for beginners.

Yeah we can skip the Visual BASIC because it has become too complex and is locked into Windows. A simpler BASIC is Free BASIC. It is also cross platform between Linux and Windows. Another BASIC is BASIC-256 designed for kids to use.

A more easier and simpler language is Logo which uses a turtle with a pen to draw things and is designed for younger kids to use, but older ones can use it as well.

It is better to start out children and teenagers on the easier and simpler languages so they don't get discouraged and give up. Do you really want to teach them C first and then try to explain the proper use of a semicolon and pointers? You teach them the languages you know later, after they mastered the simpler and easier languages. After mastering BASIC or Logo you can teach them C, C++, Python, Java, PHP, whatever later.

"I can't think of a modern BASIC implementation that's neither horrendously complex for a new programmer or insanely outdated."

Think again.

its an open source compiler that will compile qbasic code and has support for advanced features like pointers and some OOP. also has a significant amount of c libraries ported to it. http://www.freebasic.net/ i program my games and graphics demos in freebasic. http://syn9.thingie.net/

I've created a 3-stage reatargeable cross compiler for ZX Spectrum BASIC, and could easily create an interpreter like that for Windows/Linux using the parser module. It's a ZX Spectrum BASIC "dialect", but also has some improvements taken from FreeBasic.

I think it's a nice idea. I will do a Sinclair BASIC interpreter this way.

---
"Nostalgia is not what it used to be"

FreeBasic is a project that started just a few years ago and it is now more than mature. You can compile win32 programs from the command line (not interpreted or bytecode), use c dll's and the windows api and just about anything you can imagine (you can even program OO techniques if you want). The freebasic compiler is written in freebasic.

Of course its still BASIC, so the program above (minus the line numbers and with the comma gone from the end of the print statement) will compile and run just as well as it did 30 years ago.

In addition, there is not only a lot of example code with the distribution, but a community that is available to share with and learn from.
http://www.freebasic.net/forum/

In my opinion by far your best bet is something like FreeBASIC (http://www.freebasic.net/) which has a number of advantages as such:

• Available for DOS, Win32 and Linux
• Compiles to fast, native, very compact executables. A major advantage over Python or VB if he wants to give copies of his creations to friends.
• Includes bindings for dozens of major libraries e.g. OpenGL, SDL, DirectX, MySQL, SQLite, GTK, Win32 API, FMOD, BASS etc.
• Essentially based on QuickBasic (there is a QB compatability switch) but with the addition of things like pointers, basic object orientated features, a greatly expanded built-in graphics library and even in-line assembly.
• Several good, free IDEs

I taught my girlfriend to program using FreeBASIC in a single evening and she picked it up really quickly, even writing her first game (using circles for the objects) over two nights.

With it being BASIC it's quick to get started, but has enough modern features and bindings that it's perfectly suitable for serious work. I've used it for quick prototyping and written quite a few helper apps and utilities for work, and I know others who've used it to write Windows Services without too much trouble.

It's simple to understand (a kind of...), and if you show him some the graphical stuff (different resolutions, on text mode, graphical mode) it think will be courious to learn. (make sure that your windows/dosbox emulator supports that graphical modes)

There is no need to mess with an emulator. FreeBasic (when the compiler is run with the -lang qb switch) has identical syntax, including the graphical commands.

For those who have either never used BASIC (other than VB) or have preconceived false notions about the family of langauges, check out the open source FreeBASIC compiler, from http://freebasic.net./ It supports much of the old QuickBASIC syntax, as well as a much cleaner, modern syntax that supports object-oriented programming, pointers, etc, all with the goodness of a good runtime library that has (and has always had from the early days of BASIC) a good dynamic string library.

Yes GOTO is still in the language (as it is in C where it is extremely useful in a handful of critical cases), but you won't see line number or even line labels much. Instead you get a fully structured language that's easily equal to C. FreeBASIC produces object code compatible with any C library and can leverage things like GTK.

It was kind of fun to port some of my old QB code (graphics code even) to run under FreeBASIC. FB's runtime emulates the older graphics modes (Screen 9 anyone?) on modern X11 or Windows systems. Kind of fun to run the old nibbles.bas game again, natively compiled to a linux app (console or X11... you decide).

These days, of course, I stick to Python. But rather than mixing C and Python for speed, I probably should look into writing python extensions in FB.

For those of you interested in scripting in BASIC It's worth mentioning the FreeBasic project, a cross platform Basic compiler based on the Microsoft QuickBasic dialect. It's compatible with QB script but also implements many new features for modern functionality (such as OOP). It also supports in-line Assembly, C libraries and compiles to dependency free stand-alone executables.

More information from the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebasic

Official FreeBasic site:
http://www.freebasic.net/

What? No mention of Freebasic? I am saddened. Maybe they should... http://www.freebasic.net/

I see what the article was talking about. This is TERRIBLE code. Who uses GOTO? Not even BASIC programmers use it anymore!

Does it have pointers? Can you drop into assembler with the ease of GCC? etc... Does it optimize on the same level as GCC or Sun CC? Just because it's compiled doesn't make it efficient. Both the language and the compilers have to have the capability of being efficient.

> BASIC is wickedly inefficient.

FreeBasic compiles to native code; truly wicked.

And Freebasic http://www.freebasic.net/ It runs on Windows, Linux and DOS. Lately it has been becoming less "BASIC-like" (which is a direction that I really don't approve of -- no gosubs any more, for example) but it's still very cool.

Ooops, with
's this time:

but what I'd like to see is a dual-core-optimized dialect of QBasic that will handle obscenely large arrays without kvetching.
FreeBASIC. http://www.freebasic.net/

It's no more optimized for dual-core than C is, but it runs as fast as the equivalent C code compiled with -O0 (it doesn't optimize yet). Compiles to asm like C does (no bytecode, no VM) and usually beats other BASICs in benchmarks. It handles arrays as large as C can. And of all the modern BASICs it's the closest to QBasic, able to run many nontrivial (including graphical) QBasic programs unmodified.

Here's an IDE for it if you're interested: http://fbide.freebasic.net/

Ooops, with
's this time:

but what I'd like to see is a dual-core-optimized dialect of QBasic that will handle obscenely large arrays without kvetching.
FreeBASIC. http://www.freebasic.net/

It's no more optimized for dual-core than C is, but it runs as fast as the equivalent C code compiled with -O0 (it doesn't optimize yet). Compiles to asm like C does (no bytecode, no VM) and usually beats other BASICs in benchmarks. It handles arrays as large as C can. And of all the modern BASICs it's the closest to QBasic, able to run many nontrivial (including graphical) QBasic programs unmodified.

Here's an IDE for it if you're interested: http://fbide.freebasic.net/

but what I'd like to see is a dual-core-optimized dialect of QBasic that will handle obscenely large arrays without kvetching.
FreeBASIC. http://www.freebasic.net/ It's no more optimized for dual-core than C is, but it runs as fast as the equivalent C code compiled with -O0 (it doesn't optimize yet). Compiles to asm like C does (no bytecode, no VM) and usually beats other BASICs in benchmarks. It handles arrays as large as C can. And of all the modern BASICs it's the closest to QBasic, able to run many nontrivial (including graphical) QBasic programs unmodified. Here's an IDE for it if you're interested: http://fbide.freebasic.net/

but what I'd like to see is a dual-core-optimized dialect of QBasic that will handle obscenely large arrays without kvetching.
FreeBASIC. http://www.freebasic.net/ It's no more optimized for dual-core than C is, but it runs as fast as the equivalent C code compiled with -O0 (it doesn't optimize yet). Compiles to asm like C does (no bytecode, no VM) and usually beats other BASICs in benchmarks. It handles arrays as large as C can. And of all the modern BASICs it's the closest to QBasic, able to run many nontrivial (including graphical) QBasic programs unmodified. Here's an IDE for it if you're interested: http://fbide.freebasic.net/

I'm not quite sure where Mr. Brin's son was allegedly looking for all those years. Windows 95 and 98 had BASIC on the CDs' extras. Not sure about ME. But BASICs sufficient for math problems have never been absent from the WWW; should I think that Mr. Brin's son was not using the Web in 2002? Anyhow, these days it's quite a lot easier to find a good free BASIC than it has been in years. There are quite a few modern BASICs, more than one of them free, and more than one capable of harnessing the full power of Win32. My favorite is FreeBASIC, but the list on Wikipedia is definitely worth a read.

If you really want to play with BASIC, you still can. There is Freebasic, at http://www.freebasic.net/, a GPL'ed open source BASIC compiler.

Three points.

1. Not everyone wants to make money off their Open Source project. I've contributed fairly significant amounts of code(a port to an embedded platform) to FreeBASIC, my favourite compiler, but I've done it because it's a useful tool for what I use it for, not because I want to be rewarded with riches.

2. You can't just leave the statement "Open source OSes are a LOT better" hanging without quanitfying it somehow.

My experience has been that some of the most critical parts of an OS are easier to work with in commercial OSes, probably because companies actually have to sell them to someone.

Compare getting a wifi card to work in Windows and in Linux, and under one you'll find you insert the CD to install the drivers and interface then install the card, and on the other you'll have to install some wacky kernel patch, compile, then spend hours trying to figure out what files in /etc you have to edit to actually get the thing to run.

Since uptime for a Windows XP system that hasn't been compromised (not as improbable as it sounds if you use best practices) is comparable in terms of a workstation timeframe (My PC has been on non-stop for months, for example), and a system with proper drivers tends to run faster than one using non-specific generic drivers, my experience has been that open source kernels aren't better in any significant area when compared to using a commercial infastructure to run Open Source Software.

http://freebasic.net/ is much easier to program in, and comes with lots of wizz-bangy libraries and examples to use them!

Dictionary:
http://wordweb.info/

Search to replace Windows crippled search, though Desktop search may be better:
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

New to me, but have been wanting since before XP:
http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardli nkshellext.html Video editing:
http://www.virtualdub.org/
Notepad replacement:
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

And of course Firefox and OpenOffice, but those are available for other systems, oh and VideoLan Client (VLC)
For programming: (also available for Linux)
http://www.freebasic.net/

You also may want to check out my learning japanese apps post:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182351&cid =15073257

Since you said you like Basic:

http://www.freebasic.net/

Think QuickBasic with true Win32 binaries. The binaries are super small and super fast. Oh, and it runs on Linux too, if you are into that.

Windows XP has gotten incompatible with QuickBASIC Check out FreeBASIC instead which strives to be compatible with QB: http://freebasic.net/

http://www.mandelbrot-dazibao.com/Programs/Program s.htm
Has a copy, so do plenty of other sites. FreeBASIC http://freebasic.net/ also compiles many QuickBASIC Programs if they are saved in Text and not Quick format.

I'm afraid that your post comes off as a troll, nothing more.

There are lots of people like me who use tonnes of Free software on their windows PCs because it just works. I never have to wonder if mplayer or vlc will play a video, because I know it just will. That's just one of an infinite variety of examples.

I use FreeBASIC to code because I'm strange and like BASIC syntax. No linux involved. If I wanted to, I could install Litestep or blackbox on my desktop and do away with explorer altogether. If I supplemented that with a Cygwin or Msys command line, as many developers use, We've managed to Unixify our desktops without dealing with the strangeness of the Linux platform. There is a non-trivial number of people who do just that.

Off topic, but I was sure I'd seen your name before so I checked it out, and sure enough, you've got qb stuff on your site.

Have you seen the 'new'(1 year old yesterday) Freebasic compiler? It's quite nice, and it's 99% compatible with QB syntax.

Get an old PC(C64, Apple 2xx, IBM PCjr, etc) with basic built in,

For the same reason why people don't see why you'd want to fly model airplanes or race cars or ride motorbikes or drink fine wine/beer: some people just aren't that swift.

I ported FreeBASIC to x-box. The port is broken at the moment because of some internal changes, but not before I managed to get a groovy screenshot of Star Phalanx running on the x-box.

I'm working with the core devs on getting it working again. :)

All your freebasic are belong to us?

Um...no?

apt-get dist-upgrade

Well. One reboot for the kernel, but I think it still proves you're wrong. Sorry man.

That said, I use XP, and I'll be using uClinux to compile games in linux using freebasic without needing another partition, or a reboot. :P

Actually, using SP2 slipstreamed onto an xp machine running firefox, I don't need to worry about patching or reboots either, thanks to built-in firewall.

Maybe I'm just 31337er than you are(basic language aside)? :P