What Ever Happened to QBASIC?

Posted by Cliff on Sunday September 16, 2001 @05:00AM from the replaced-by-its-visual-bretheren dept.

idg101 asks: "I can remember the days when i was 10, programming in QBASIC and checking out all the programs on such sites as this one. There were exciting! Around age 13 i can remember talk of getting an internet interface to work with in your programs. Now, I am 19, and the story has apparently changed. Qbasic.com looks the same as it did many years ago. What happened to QBASIC and its followers?" My guess is that Microsoft has been doing it's best to replace all of the old-school BASIC interpreters with it's Visual Basic...which is all well and good unless all you wanted to do was fiddle with a 10-100 line quickie. So, reiterating idg101's question: are there still lightweight BASIC interpreters still floating around?

1 of 23 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Make your own by bentini · 2001-09-16 05:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

Dude, if you really want, make your own.
The first one should be easy. One chapter in "The Unix Programming Environment" makes an interpreter/compiler for a language almost as powerful as basic, just different.
It would be a great exercise to make your own. You'd learn a lot about compilers and languages. Also, because you maintain it, you have a lot of flexibility in what it does, and how it acts. You'd also, I'm sure, get mad props on slashdot and maybe after you posted about it later, win converts for people who wanted a quick language to do what you want to do.