
30 years later, QBasic is still the best - bubblicious
http://www.nicolasbize.com/blog/30-years-later-qbasic-is-still-the-best/
======
jbandela1
For young children, QBasic and goto may indeed be superior to more structured
languages. From a neuro development perspective we know that young children
are very concrete and have limited abstraction ability. With Basic and goto, a
program is more concrete (you run a line which is more or less 1 command) and
linear (no nested structures). With structured programming, it is more
abstract, and has an recursive structure (with arbitrary levels of nesting).

Because of this, it might be preferable to introduce a child to the more
linear, concrete programming model with goto and let them experience the
thrill of programming then as they develop more and their programs increase in
complexity, introduce them later to other more abstract methods and languages
such as structured programming, oop, and functional.

~~~
clock_tower
From my experience back when I was 12: once you get ambitious enough in
QBasic, you start to wish for some way of organizing the code and making it
easier to follow. At that point, an intro to structured programming or OOP is
natural.

(Probably not functional programming, though, since functional's not very good
for games, and what else do you think QBasic is going to be used for?)

~~~
epsylon
QBasic supports subroutines (called SUB for procedures and FUNCTION for
functions). You can write very structured code with QBasic; pretty much the
only thing it lacks is pointers, but it's a very capable language otherwise.

~~~
exDM69
> pretty much the only thing it lacks is pointers, but it's a very capable...

You can PEEK and POKE arbitrary memory addresses and use CALL ABSOLUTE to call
assembly shell code at any address.

I remember typing out a mouse driver shell code in hexadecimal from a
magazine. QBasic does not have built in mouse routines and the young me was
baffled when you could make that happen with a long string of digits.

------
jasode
_> to realize that in more than 30 years, we have not been able to come up
with something better for our kids: Qbasic ..., but we have never really made
a simpler or more direct access to the thrill of programming than QBasic. _

First, I think it's really cool that he's exposing a young mind to
programming. But I'm also old enough to have installed QBasic from floppy
disks and part of me thinks his statements I quoted are romanticizing QBasic a
little bit.

I think that Javascript in today's browser is a fine substitute. I've had good
experience with children that age by going to the browser, pressing F12, go to
Console tab and start typing code. It can start as simple as:

    
    
      alert("hello world");
    

And boom, you get a popup. You can also show the kid he can type in arithmetic
stuff like "2+3" and he'll get back the answer 5. You can then show him how to
_modify_ the existing web page. You can ramp up a slight bit of complexity by
showing how to create a text file and writing Javascript and then having the
browser run it. The 8-year olds I've seen can handle this no problem.

What I like about the Javascript-for-kids approach is that it shows them that
programming isn't some other universe where you install QBasic in a vm.
Instead, the initiation into programming/experimentation is just 2 keystrokes
away. There's something about the immediacy of F12-Javascript that keeps it
from being an esoteric dark corner. The kid can also get more mileage out of
his "programming" knowledge because he can use his Javascript console tricks
at his friend's house on any web browser. On the other hand, playing with
QBasic today is more isolating. The use of QBasic in 1980s had more utility
because the syntax of '10 PRINT "HELLO"' also worked on Apple II, Commodore
64, Radio Shack TRS-80, Texas Instruments TI-99, etc.

~~~
wvenable
I agree with your complaints about QBasic but I disagree a bit about
JavaScript. You are totally right that the environment being right there in
the browser is great. But if you press F12 right now you'll find an amazing
complex dialog box -- as a professional you just implicitly skip over that
complexity. And JavaScript is a significantly more difficult language than
QBasic even if it's one of the simpler professional languages.

When I taught my daughter about programming I actually installed an old copy
of Visual Basic 6.0 and it was really good for that. You draw the UI and the
interact it with it mostly procedurally. She created a small useful
application out of it. It's kind of crazy that in 2016 all our programming
environments are more complicated than VB6.

~~~
jasode
_> But if you press F12 right now you'll find an amazing complex dialog box --
as a professional you just implicitly skip over that complexity._

That observation is fascinating to me. Isn't it possible that we're judging it
with adult eyes? To me, kids can filter out "ui complexity" that's not
relevant to whatever exploration they are doing. Examples I think of:

A microwave oven[1] might have 25 separate buttons on it but a 6-year old will
know the 2 buttons to press to heat up the popcorn. Yes, the keypad complexity
handles more advanced techniques of 2-stage cooking with different power
levels etc but the child just ignores all of that.

Or, how many of us grew up with those multi-component integrated stereo
racks?[2] The front panel has all those buttons, sliders, knobs, and lights.
And yet, a small child knows how to turn the FM knob to find his favorite
radio station or rewind a cassette to replay a song.

I also see video games[3] that 6 to 8 year olds play (even if the game wasn't
intended for that younger age group). To me, the screenshots show a complex
"dashboard" at the bottom of weapons or other status. (I'm not a Starcraft
player and it all just looks complicated and confusing to me.)

I think kids can look at the "complex" F12 screen the same way as microwave
ovens, stereo receivers, and Starcraft screens: ignore the non-relevant UI
elements and just type "alert ("hello");"

[1][https://www.google.com/search?q=microwave+oven+keypad&source...](https://www.google.com/search?q=microwave+oven+keypad&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

[2][https://www.google.com/search?q=integrated+stereo+rack+turnt...](https://www.google.com/search?q=integrated+stereo+rack+turntable+fm+tuner+cassette+deck&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

[3][https://www.google.com/search?q=starcraft+ii+screenshot&sour...](https://www.google.com/search?q=starcraft+ii+screenshot&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

~~~
takno
Does anybody at all know what more than 2 buttons do on their microwave? I
thought they were mostly there for decoration

~~~
todd8
The real problem is there is no ISO Standard for the appliance interfaces. Do
you press power level first? Or time first. Is it Forth like, numbers then
operation or Haskell like, Function then number. My refrigerator has
illuminated bars indicating how cold it is set for. Even after downloading a
pdf of the user guide I can't figure out if I'm setting it correctly. Placing
a thermometer inside and using trial and error solved the problem (after a few
frozen bags of spinach).

~~~
david-given
My microwave has two knobs. One for power, one for time. It turns on
automatically when you turn the timer and turns off automatically (sounding a
_mechanical_ bell) when the timer hits zero.

I believe the timer is clockwork.

~~~
marssaxman
I used one of those microwaves once. Best interface ever, and so much simpler
than the high-tech beepy button matrix! Do microwave manufacturers just not
realize that they're making their products worse by complicating them? I don't
get it.

~~~
eru
Knobs are more expensive than buttons?

~~~
david-given
Actually, yes. Anything with a moving part is painfully expensive, which is
why cheap monitors try to reduce the number of buttons or use capacitative
touch-sensitive controls.

Touch-sensitive membrane buttons like the ones the use on the front of
microwaves are _much_ cheaper than mechanical timers.

------
ilitirit
I don't think QBasic's mainstream popularity can be understated. Googling
"gorillas.bas" gives you a predictable result. I suppose it can be argued that
Gorillas and Nibbles are partly responsible for QBasic's popularity (is there
a lesson in here somewhere?).

However, like many others, QBasic was not my first experience with a BASIC
language. Prior to that was GW-BASIC on PC (it was part of our introductory
course to Computers at high school), and before that was Sinclair BASIC, which
I learned in part from a book called "Peek, Poke, Byte and RAM"

[http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=2000269](http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=2000269)

But my first encounter with a programming language was Logo:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_\(programming_language\))

I'm sure there was a BBC Kids show that featured Logo programming (yes, they
drew shapes with the turtle), but I can't remember the name. What I liked
about Logo was that, as a child, it seemed very intuitive, and I felt like
that even without having touched a computer I knew what programming was about,
which is a lot more than I can say for any other language I've worked with.

~~~
npongratz
PBS had a great show directed at children called 3-2-1 Contact in the 1980s,
which I remember featuring Logo.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-2-1_Contact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-2-1_Contact)

------
nickpsecurity
For anyone that misses QBASIC, there's FreeBASIC that's a lot like it & easy
to install:

[http://www.freebasic.net/](http://www.freebasic.net/)

After loosing my memory, I have to relearn programming nearly from scratch. I
took a challenge to do specific program in around an hour, from language to
toolchain to solution. Had to be system-like language. Got bogged down by
toolchains, IDE's, whatever. Said screw it: why the hell is it so hard when I
faintly recall starting lightening-fast on QBASIC? Found a BASIC, FreeBASIC,
that was just like it with simple command to launch stuff made in text editor
and good documentation. Maybe half an hour of my challenge gone.

Next, time to apply lessons I remembered from high-assurance and Wirth. First,
subset the language to minimum necessary. Used docs to test each in isolation
to develop template & functions for using them, esp file I/O. Wrote formal
spec in English & pseudocode of my problem with decomposed functions. Mapped
almost 1-to-1 to FreeBASIC as expected. Did one refactoring. Executed code for
first time to see successful run & solution to problem.

Yeah, BASIC is friggin awesome. I stretched industrial BASIC's, esp 4GL's,
really far back when I was a hacker as they did rapid iteration, safe-by-
default, and ran fast. Today, I'd say do a Wirth language like Oberon or
Component Pascal instead. Still, BASIC has lessons to teach us and a painless
bootstrapping for developer that many modern tools lack outside of scripting.

~~~
versteegen
I've been using FreeBASIC for about 10 years and help maintain a 100+kLOC
codebase written in it (a game engine).

FreeBASIC has multiple dialects; there's the qb dialect that supports most of
QB except some audio and real-mode DOS-related commands, and the modern fb
dialect, which is all of C plus half of C++ with BASIC syntax. And it does
improve on C and C++ in several ways, like much better string support and a
"preprocessor" that looks like the C preprocessor but is far more powerful
(it's not a preprocessor, so it knows about types and variables, etc).

Of course it's not better than QBasic in every way: it's not interpreted with
that awesome edit-and-continue ability that QBasic had. And the compiler can
be quite buggy.

There are also a number of other QB successor languages, like QB64, which has
a focus on the QBasic IDE and supporting all of the audio-visual stuff QB had
fully. But (after comparing the codebases) will say FB is written far more
like a professional product.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Thanks for the review. Sounds like it's what I used to call an "industrial"
BASIC where it has the features and compiler to get real work done. Many
people think some toy with a few key words and interpretation when they think
BASIC. Yet, I used to do all my hacking in it and Visual Basic 6 for GUI
layer. Loved VB6 specifically for rapid iteration: instant load, instant test-
run, instant... you name it on P3 400Mhz w/ 128MB RAM.

That efficiency on arbitrary hardware is something industrial BASIC's and
Wirth languages have in common. Only Go can touch it these days but still not
low-level as Wirth stuff gets.

~~~
versteegen
Yes, I would agree with "industrial", especially since you can link with any C
library after translating the headers with SWIG (translations of common
libraries like C, winapi and GTK are included with FB). I've never used/don't
know VB, but it appears that quite a lot of FB's design is borrowed from it.
In recent years FB has been focused on borrowing C++ features instead (and
even aiming to be ABI compatible with g++, not sure if that works). E.g.
recently added "dim byref" (like a C++ reference variable) and polymorphism +
RTTI. Sometimes things move in the other direction, like binary literals new
in C++14 :)

~~~
nickpsecurity
Nice. Appreciate the tips.

------
tdeck
One important thing about QBasic that's often overlooked is that it's a
community of 100% amateurs.

I learned to program in 2004 in QBasic, although I very rarely fire it up
anymore. By then it was not considered a "serious" language and we all knew
it. But that meant the stakes were a lot lower. It's a lot of newbies and a
few old-timers who do things for fun. This makes things a lot less
intimidating for the non-coder. There are no conferences, no corporate
sponsors, no polarizing big-shot Twitter personalities. It's a realm
surprisingly insulated from the pissing contest of modern engineering culture
and technical progress, where things that are acknowledged to be easy in other
languages are nonetheless praised as impressive when done in QBasic.

Another thing is that QBasic has no decent library functionality for code
reuse (QB4.5 has a linker but no one knows how to use it). This means people
constantly reinvent the wheel, and they aren't told not to. People copy and
paste snippets of code and learn how they work, but they don't build ever more
complex mashups every year. Thus, you're not on the framework treadmill or
starting 5 years behind the curve. Things are done simply and
idiosyncratically, pretty much the same way they were done in 1995 or 1988.

Makes me nostalgic just thinking about it.

------
esfandia
What's nice with BASIC is that no context is required from the programmer: you
don't need to know about the call stack or about variable scope. It's the
programming equivalent of WYSIWYG. It also doesn't hurt that BASIC used to be
resident in ROM (thinking back of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum), and that there
were nice and simple primitives for drawing on the screen.

I agree with the blog author, and I still think it's the best language to
learn programming. Everything else is software engineering, and gets in the
way of the instant gratification that got so many of us hooked on programming.

What's wrong with starting with BASIC like I did, writing increasingly complex
code, getting frustrated with the resulting spaghetti, then learning to use
GOSUB more, which then gets you ready for a procedural language like Pascal?
At least this way you know why pros don't code in BASIC. The same path of
frustration (and fun) can also be used to go from Pascal to an OO language
like Python or Ruby.

~~~
dragonbonheur
You do need to know about variable scope with modern BASICs like FreeBASIC and
GAMBAS.

------
sevensor
My favorite thing about this story is that Basic was meant to be used exactly
this way, for getting new programmers off the ground. And like everyone, I've
got fond memories. We had an IBM PS/2 80286, with a whole megabyte of memory,
a 20 megabyte hard drive, and MS-DOS three point something. At some point, I
discovered that it had Basic, but it didn't have a graphical editor. It had
edlin, which was still enough to write programs that told their users how
awesome I was. Forever, with gotos.

And for the record, I don't think using gotos as a child sabotaged my ability
to write structured code later in life. "GOTO considered harmful" gets taken
_way_ out of context!

~~~
dragonbonheur
I've always thought that learning to follow GOTOs and GOSUBs was the key to
understand assembly language. "GOTO considered harmful" is really what's
considered harmful. I never take anyone who says "X considered harmful"
seriously because of "GOTO considered harmful".

~~~
Jtsummers
"GOTO considered harmful" is about a style of _unstructured_ programming that
was prevalent in its era.

GOTOs are certainly not harmful on their own. But they offer a power that
leads to unmaintainable and unreasonable [0] code. Like the spaghetti mess
that is callback hell today. Languages which offer _structured_ constructs
that are really just syntactic sugar over GOTOs are better [1]. Structured use
of GOTOs are feasible. But it requires a discipline that is not found in the
community at large. If you're responsible for any project involving more than
yourself as the developer, you cannot assume that discipline is present.

With regard to assembly, yes, the branching and jumping instructions are the
gotos Dijkstra was talking about. No, he wasn't wrong. The thing is, they have
to be used in a disciplined manner or the outcome is extremely fragile code.
Which was one of his biggest hobby horses. He viewed programming as a branch
of mathematics. Where programs could be derived from first principles. GOTOs,
as commonly used, necessarily broke that process. They also make it nigh
impossible to understand poorly disciplined code. Same thing with magic
numbers, weak type systems, and a number of other topics. They aren't _bad_ on
their own. They're bad when used in practice because they make undisciplined
code trivial to produce.

[0] In the sense that the code cannot be reasoned about.

[1] In a strict sense, they're equivalent. In a less strict sense, they remove
or minimize the ability to make unreasonable [0] code.

------
hangonhn
"When developing a skill, it is much better to acquire the right reflexes from
the start rather than have to correct years of bad practice."

I disagree with this statement. "Learning" is a long process of acquiring and
also discarding habits and knowledge. The best intro I ever read for
relativity was "An Equation That Changed the World" and it's a series of
dialogues between Newton, Einstein, and the author (a modern physicist).
Newtonian physics is relatively (haha) easy to understand. Once you understand
that and then you can throw in some edge cases where it fails, you can
introduce relativity and it makes relativity much easier to grasp.

Likewise for programming. I learned with QBasic. Then as the code got messier,
I started using "sub", etc. and then started playing other concepts until I
outgrew the language. Functional programming came to me the same way. I
outgrew my existing methods and reached for more advanced ones.

All this is to say it's OK to start with easier and imperfect methods. We
learn by acquiring new knowledge and then knowing them well enough to see
their flaws before moving onto something better.

~~~
vinceguidry
I'd argue that programming isn't like other skills in this regard. Obviously
if you're teaching something like the violin, where there's one right way to
hold the bow and learning how to play holding the bow in any other way will
ultimately hamper you, sure, it's worth it to drill the One True Way.

But coding isn't like that. Sure, GOTOs as a means for control flow, suck for
most serious applications compared to the readily-available alternatives, it's
not like you can't build your own control flow mechanisms with their own
properties out of the GOTO primitive, and learning how these work and fail is
really good practice.

Time spent mucking about doing the wrong thing _in coding_ teaches you how to
ascertain the right way. Other skills don't necessarily offer this.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There isn't really a One True Way in music either. There are stupid ways to
hold a bow, and there's a small range of ways that works. But it's certainly
not something you can reduce to a formula of so-many-inches along and an angle
of theta.

The arts are mostly practice led, so there are _efficient and comfortable_
ways to get an expressive result, which may not be intuitive or obvious to
beginners, and which probably need to be practiced.

But plenty of people pick up instruments by experimenting, and some of them go
on to have successful careers - because results matter more than technique,
and if you're getting good _artistic_ results perfect technique is secondary.

And I think the GOTO thing is overblown, and misses the point in exactly the
same technique-vs-outcome way.

The desired outcome is legible, maintainable code. If you bracket a thousand
lines inside a single if statement, you're not any closer to that aim than
someone who uses GOTO.

What's missing from BASIC - and from any kind of training that's syntax-based
instead of concept-based - is that sense of using structures to simplify and
highlight program logic and flow.

PASCAL was fairly new when I was learning to code, and it was billed as some
kind of magical mental training tool that would eliminate bad habits and make
you a better programmer.

In fact it's just a vanilla C-family language with a few quirks, and the
mental training side of it was always wildly oversold.

Currently _no language at all_ teaches separation of concerns, chunking,
relative abstraction, DRY, and other fundamental concepts in an accessible way
- and there should be. Because they really can help turn hard problems into
simpler problems, and make all kinds of challenges more manageable - which is
more fundamental to programming than knowing that POKE 53280,1 will make the
screen frame white on a C64.

------
GregBuchholz
No love for Logo? I currently have my kids experimenting with ucbLogo and
FMSLogo. And one of our latest endeavors is to hook it up to Minecraft [1],
but that is certainly quite convoluted, with having to run minecraft servers
with various plugins, and then working around the borked networking
capabilities of FMSLogo, etc.. I wonder what other simple approaches there are
to programmatically control Minecraft.

[1][http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/05/minecraft-graphics-
tur...](http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/05/minecraft-graphics-turtle.html)

~~~
acomjean
I learned through logo in middle school. A language sophisticated enough to
later (high school) write programs that would take equations and graph them.

Plus who doesn't love writing software to create spirograph graphics.

~~~
voltagex_
I come back to Logo probably once every 2 years, for about 15 years now. First
used it in primary (elementary) school but never really progressed past
spirographs.

I think I'll fire it up again this weekend - any hints?

~~~
GregBuchholz
Something more than a weekend splurge:

Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics

[http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-
Artificial...](http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial-
Intelligence/dp/0262510375/)

...and I've not yet tried it, but netlogo sounds interesting.

[https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/](https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/)

~~~
voltagex_
Turtle Geometry book as a "borrowable" ePub (DRM).
[https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3267302W/Turtle_geometry](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3267302W/Turtle_geometry)

------
whatever_dude
I have so many fond memories of QBasic, and QuickBasic.

Coming from GWBasic, I knew it was not supposed to be the best language ever.
I had been using Turbo Pascal, and knew the IDE to be great, and the language
more structured. I was also using C, and knew it to be fast.

But QBasic was better where it mattered to me.

When I learned to tame it - to name things accordingly (variable names could
have dots!), to not use line numbers or GOTOs, it was so easy and fun doing
anything in it.

I could press F2 to jump to any function/method declaration I needed. I could
press F1 on any method to quickly jump to its declaration/help, and then
navigate help in the same manner (it was all hyperlinked!).

I could stop my program in the middle of the execution so I could issue inline
commands, print vars, and even CHANGE it, before continuing execution... even
today, with proper debugging/logging any modern IDE/platform provides, I never
got a dev/test workflow as easy as that quick iteration cycle that QBasic
allowed.

In time I started using QuickBasic instead (not the same thing!), learned to
call interruptions, create actual executables, and do all kinds of crazy stuff
most people were not supposed to do from there. Sure, running assembly from it
wasn't as easy as Turbo Pascal (where you could do it inline) but as long as
you had a library of common assembly calls created, it was just a matter of
reusing it.

The language wasn't fast, and the compiled files were a bit bloated. In time I
moved to something else. But I still miss the intimacy I had with the editor
and the language. It's like a first love, the one that got away.

------
qznc
There are various good options:

Scratch [https://scratch.mit.edu/](https://scratch.mit.edu/)

CodinGame [https://www.codingame.com/games](https://www.codingame.com/games)

Squeak [http://squeak.org/](http://squeak.org/)

Logo (even in browser
[https://turtleacademy.com/](https://turtleacademy.com/))

JsFiddle if you want to go for somewhat longer javascript
[https://jsfiddle.net/](https://jsfiddle.net/)

Alice [http://www.alice.org/](http://www.alice.org/)

------
brianpgordon
I think TI-BASIC is a strong competitor. A free-form keyboard can be
overwhelming and the different things you can do aren't very discoverable. In
the TI-BASIC environment on the TI-82/83/83+/84+, the keywords (Goto, While,
Disp, ClrHome, etc) are tokens which must be inserted into the program by
selecting them from menus. So you get a rich set of powerful commands (easily
in the hundreds, even for the simple TI-84, and many more for the TI-89) but
they're all discoverable through the normal menus and through the catalog
menu. You start out knowing a few commands like Lbl and Goto, but through the
process of scrolling over unknown commands (like maybe For or While in the
control flow menu) repeatedly you start to wonder what they do, and then try
them out, until you know what everything does and you can write the cleanest
possible code. It's a wonderful way to learn.

And it supports both a text mode (with a "write string at grid position"
operation for easy game making - text mode is a must on the CPU-starved
TI-84+) and a graphical mode, with tons of stuff to do in both. For example,
in high school I had a program that accepted a string of "DNA" and used it to
repeatedly call the built-in pattern-drawing command with different arguments,
producing a mosaic of overlapping patterns, so that each different input
string produced a different final pattern. It's like 4 lines of code and kept
me endlessly entertained in class.

And that brings me to its greatest advantage- its presence in the math
classroom. In middle school and high school, math for a gifted student is
boring as death, and you've got a little BASIC interpreter sitting right there
on your desk. You can transform hundreds of wasted hours a year into
productive learning time.

~~~
hnal943
This is exactly how I fell in love with programming. My first program of any
size solved systems of equations using 3 or 4 methods and showed its work. The
satisfaction was incredible.

------
transfire
To be honest I don't think modern languages are all they are cracked up to be.
Back in the day, very large and complex systems were managed quite well with
languages like QBASIC, COBOL and FORTRAN, and ran rock solid for decades
(hell, a few are still operational). But today, programming is such a
polyglotic mess and conceptual navel-gazing nightmare -- it really is no
wonder that so many projects end in failure.

~~~
bloaf
As an outsider looking in: programmers, fix thy tools.

My first introduction to programming was QBasic in the 90s, and I had a great
time making little pictures, beeps/bloops, and text on the screen. I then
moved on to some basic Fortran and other engineering-type languages in
undergrad c. 2006. My impression of the workflows for Fortran at that time was
"this is more annoying than BASIC, but I guess its because its more powerful
and complex. I bet they'll fix the awkwardness eventually though."

Imagine my supersize when I decide to pick up the trendy modern language of
Haskell in 2015 and find out that installing, configuring, and working in it
was just as bad as Fortran back in 2006. WTF has everybody been doing for the
past 10-20 years?

It seems to me that because programming is a new discipline, lots of people
are trying to reinvent wheels. There is nothing wrong with this, in and of
itself, since we'll essentially be making sure that we get really good at
making wheels and end up with really high quality specimens. The problem is
that wheels by themselves aren't that useful, and no one is bothering to make
an automobile.

QBasic might have had square wheels, but at least they felt attached to
something.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _It seems to me that because programming is a new discipline, lots of people
> are trying to reinvent wheels. There is nothing wrong with this, in and of
> itself, since we 'll essentially be making sure that we get really good at
> making wheels and end up with really high quality specimens. The problem is
> that wheels by themselves aren't that useful, and no one is bothering to
> make an automobile._

There's a lot of truth to that. People are blazing forward, without even
looking at the past that's beyond the most recent trendy languages and
frameworks. End result is that there's a lot of wheels reinvented, but poorly.

Learning Lisp was a particular eye opener for me. It was a gateway drug to
discovering that there were so many things, so better thought out than what we
have now (maybe because people did actually think about what they're doing
back then, instead of releasing glorified CRUD apps "early and often"), and
we're only sometimes slowly reinventing them.

~~~
bloaf
I love this article:

[https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/ruins-of-
forgo...](https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/ruins-of-forgotten-
empires-apl-languages/)

~~~
unexistance
hoorah for mathematical basis

------
equalarrow
Author is spot on. My son and daughter have about 2 and 4 years to go before I
probably intro them to programming. When I do, it's going to be a C64 all the
way. And a real one. With a real old school monitor and a luxury a didn't have
for about a year or two: a floppy drive.

I've get a lot of the start with JS comments. But that would be the last thing
I do. As a child learning, you need to remove the complexities and
distractions of a modern system. Windows, browsers, edit js in one app, run it
in another, use a mouse, open the js debug console, etc. Just wayyy to much
stuff for a young mind to try to focus on.

Don't get me wrong, they probably _can_ learn js, but after decades of
programming in all kinds of different languages, just because js is the latest
fashion, doesn't mean I'd every try to teach it to a kid. No way.

BASIC, on the other hand, was created _for beginners_. I learned A LOT over
the years when I was using BASIC. I also had magazines (COMPUTE! & Gazette)
and books that helped immensely. I was just thinking yesterday actually, that
it was awesome having the C64 Programmers Ref Guide that had the machine
schematics and port pin outs in it!! You'll never get that for a Mac or iPhone
nowadays (and these sorts of things usually only show up on 'hacker' sites).
This was a book put you closer to the hardware so you could more easily
understand what PEEK and POKE really did. :D

I'm _really_ looking forward to the instruction days. The C64 was so popular
for a reason: it was powerful & simple. _This_ is how I want to introduce my
kids to programming. They'll figure out Ruby, JS, C and things (maybe 8-bit
assembly too!) later.

I loved my C64 (still do) and I hope that will rub off on them. Can't wait.

~~~
wvenable
> Just wayyy to much stuff for a young mind to try to focus on.

Keep in mind that most young kids can use modern technology very easily. My
son was easily navigating around computers with a mouse at 3. I had him
playing old ScummVM games at 4.

> BASIC, on the other hand, was created _for beginners_.

Yes, but C64 basic was also created when hundred dollar machines had 64k of
RAM. And it's pretty painful to use. Not everything about it is just for
beginners, it works a certain way because of hardware limitations. You might
have forgotten that variables can be 80 characters in length in C64 basic but
only the first 2 letters matter (Index$ and Input$ are the same variable).

I've got a Raspberry Pi and if I wanted to go the small locked down computer
for programming route I'd probably use that. Get a nice display and keyboard
and not mess with technology so obsolete that there is no upgrade path.

And then there's this:
[http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php](http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php)

------
mrbill
Don't forget Ahl's "101 BASIC Computer Games"!

I spent hours and hours making stuff written for DEC/MS-BASIC work on my
TI-99/4A with its limited language implementation..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games)

PDF: [http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_...](http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_Computer_Games_Mar75.pdf)

I had the later yellow-cover edition myself.

------
ender672
QBasic runs flawlessly in your browser at Internet Archive -
[https://archive.org/details/msdos_qbasic_megapack](https://archive.org/details/msdos_qbasic_megapack)

------
fit2rule
My kids have a great time with PICO8:

[http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php](http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php)

The fact that everything you need to build a game is built-in is very key to
their enjoyment - they don't need to deal with any operating system in this
environment, and have (almost) everything they need to be self-contained
developers. (Built-in docs would be nice..)

Its interesting, having watched the evolution of PICO8, to see the mass
explosion in creativity around the scene, and I have observed a key to its
success - by putting constraints on what you can do and how you can do it,
while also filling in the inner space of those constraints with _excellent_
tooling, you give people freedom - within a limit - to create amazing things
that push those limits.

You can read more about PICO8 (if you're interested) in this wonderful 'zine,
which reflects the culture of the scene very well:

[http://pico8fanzine.bigcartel.com](http://pico8fanzine.bigcartel.com)

Another big hit is LOAD81, from antirez:

[http://github.com/antirez/load81](http://github.com/antirez/load81)

This, I think, is better than QBasic, in that it has all the same
functionality in the IDE, but teaches them a better language: Lua. Plus you
can install it almost everywhere you can't install QBasic.

Anyway, in case any other HN'er out there is interested in doing stuff like
this with their kids, give PICO8 and LOAD81 a try .. they're both, in my
opinion, great ways to get young minds programming ..

------
cesarbs
QBasic was my first exposure to programming, when I was 9 years old. Fond
memories. Despite it having what today I consider terrible syntax, it made
programming extremely approachable. After a quick "hello, world" intro from an
IT guy at my mom's office, I spent countless hours reading the help pages and
learning the commands. Sometimes I wish programming could be as simple again.

------
drhayes9
I learned to program on an Apple ][, where the programming environment was
always a CTRL+RESET away. BASIC was great. I carefully typed long programs
that I found in the back of computer magazines, broke them by changing stuff,
and fiddled around endlessly. Those incantations are still in my fingers (CALL
-3116 for a nice visual effect, PEEK -16384 for the current keyboard key, VTAB
and HTAB to get around the screen, etc).

I volunteer at a local Coder Dojo and there's nothing to give these kids who
want to fiddle around like that. Scratch is the closest I've found (with the
bonus of not having to necessarily be able to read or type), but it's still
cluttered with logins and passwords... and, being a GUI, it suffers when the
kid's computer doesn't have a big enough screen to manage the complexity they
eventually create. It's a shame. I tell kids who've grown tired of Scratch
that they can "graduate" to Stencyl, a game engine that uses a similar visual
programming metaphor but lets you drop down to the Haxe beneath. It also
compiles natively to desktop or mobile, so that's cool too.

Python, ruby, and JS are all really close to the ideal "type and go"
environments, but they're also littered with speedbumps. Installing packages
and keeping the environment sane are difficult enough for some professional
engineers, let alone kids who just want to mess around and make cool stuff.

The woman who started my local Coder Dojo got her son started with his own
Linux computer at a really young age and he's a whiz at it, so maybe there's
no real problem here and I'm just underestimating the ingenuity of these kids.
They'll get it done if they really want it, I guess?

EDIT: Kinda apropos, but check this out!
[http://beagle.applearchives.com/the_posters/](http://beagle.applearchives.com/the_posters/)
I would've killed for these posters when I was a kid.

~~~
ZenoArrow
What about running BASIC on a Raspberry Pi? There are even some distros that
boot into BASIC and can work with the GPIO pins of a Raspberry Pi.

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-
bas...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-basic/)

~~~
nickpsecurity
Not to mention MikroBASIC that works with all the major microcontrollers. They
have a MikroPascal, too.

------
dkopi
QBasic was a truly incredible way to start programming. Today I'd probably
recommend python with pygame, and especially the book inventing computer games
with python: [https://inventwithpython.com/](https://inventwithpython.com/)

------
educar
There is another ritual after you start with QBasic. Your open gorilla.bas and
nibbles.bas.

Seriously, play gorilla.bas. It's one of the best games I have played.

~~~
kmill
I got my 4th grade class to play gorilla, which interestingly came with the
Windows NT machines at my school. That and that reskinned Full Tilt! Pinball
table Space Cadet. Quite a contrast.

I personally liked modifying nibbles, for instance adjusting the timing loop
so it'd be playable on a modern computer. On some occasions I made a special
key which would put the snake on auto-pilot (just towards the goal, no graph
search or anything), or which would temporarily turn off collision detection.
Somehow both of these were possible without really understanding how the whole
program worked.

------
popmilo2
Nice to hear about such success with a kid learning coding ! All the best!

There is newer, multi platform implementation called QB64
[http://www.qb64.net/](http://www.qb64.net/)

~~~
versteegen
Yes, there are a number of QBasic reimplementations and compatible languages.
FreeBASIC is one that aims to be a (compatible) successor rather than just a
reimplementation. I can't remember what the others are...

------
simonh
I started with MBasic on a Superbrain running CP/M, a very early ancestor of
GWBasic and QBasic.

I wouldn't start kids on Basic now. My daughter is learning Simple Basic at
school, but we use Macs at home and the only way to run it is in a Silverlight
container. All the variations of Basic I know of are too restricted. Don't get
me wrong, Basic back in the day was is a fine learning tool. The fact you
could PEEK and POKE memory and DIM arrays actually taught you low level
programming and system concepts that are abstracted away by modern languages
and environments. Those early Basics were truly suspended part way between
high level languages and machine code.

I appreciate the advantages of JavaScript, but also it's flaws. Learning to
pop up alert messages is a cool hack, but beyond that it gets messy fast.

Scratch is fantastic. It's cross platform, can run in the browser and
specifically designed to be very visual and intuitive. You can watch the code
run. Brilliant.

Beyond that though a learning language needs more. It needs to be cross
platform, support both procedural and object oriented forms and be capable of
text, graphics, UI and web programming. For me that means Python. It helps
that I've got pythonista on my iPad and phone. On the desktop there's also
Jupyter notebook.

At the end of the day though, teach what you know and what you enjoy. All the
technical arguments in the world can't beat passion.

------
dunkelheit
QBasic is what got me started with programming more than 20 years ago. The
thrill of writing a program that draws a rectangle, than erases it and draws
slightly to the left and then watching the rectangle zoom across the screen
hasn't been surpassed ever since.

If you want to teach a visual person like myself programming and the
programming environment requires more than one statement to put something on
the screen (including import statements), it has already lost to QBasic.

------
vancan1ty
I think BASIC! for android by Paul Laughton is a modern good modern
alternative for an entry to programming. It comes with good documentation and
examples, and is a classic basic-type language. link:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rfo.basic&...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rfo.basic&hl=en)

Once a kid might want to move up from that to solve perhaps more practical
problems using PCs, I think a combination of bash (including basic usage of
rsync, crontab, grep, sed, find, wget, ssh,...) and maybe VBA/Libreoffice
Basic can take you a long way. (You can easily make nice little form/button
based applications by dragging and dropping in the office suites. Also check
out [http://excelunusual.com/](http://excelunusual.com/) for some inspiration
on things you can do in VBA which I would not have thought practical!).

------
jheriko
<3

I learned code from QBasic and its help because books were in short supply at
the library and there was no internet for me.

As much as Xcode or VS or Qt creator are great tools they seriously lack in
that regard, as do most modern development environments. QBasic is very easy
to learn and easy to use - and trying to solve hard problems with it requires
some genuine skill and ability...

------
mayreck
Honestly this thread put a tear into my eyes....I was literally your kid like
15 years ago when i first discovered quick basic on my own as a 10 year old. I
feel this so deeply. It was much easier to learn that than anything else I've
ever learned since.

------
cyberfart
I remember doing the same. Starting with a Qbasic book I had bought with the
little money I had, I was already writing mud-like games and calculating prime
numbers after only an hour. Though I wasn't lucky enough to have done it at
that age. Lucky kid :)

------
ccozan
Ha! Who didn't hack the gorilla throwing bananas? :)

I learned to programm with BASIC [0] before on a Spectrum ZX clone, however
that GORILLA.BAS [1] was a good programming lesson. I remember even now, after
25 years, figuring out the algorithms and the parameters of the flying banana.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_BASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_BASIC)
[1]
[http://www.jefflewis.net/archive/programming/gorilla.bas](http://www.jefflewis.net/archive/programming/gorilla.bas)

~~~
sevensor
In high school, we used to mess around with banana trajectories when we were
supposed to be writing English papers in the computer lab.

------
smilekzs
I am curious what's there to stop a kid from starting a Jupyter notebook (or
even Mathematica with all the FullSnakeCaseNames) and firing away? Sure it
isn't complex at least wrt. the basics (pun intended)?

~~~
dragonbonheur
Grandpas know BASIC and they can teach any version of it to their grandkids in
under 2 weeks tops, they don't necessarily know Jupyter notebooks or
Mathematica (how much does that cost these days?).

~~~
jgamman
$250 for home use or free in browser via the learning lab

------
thom
It's mentioned in the article, but Microsoft have a nice BASIC environment
called SmallBasic[0]. It's got a decent editor with IntelliSense, there's a
community with a bunch of programs shared online[1] and it can interface with
.NET code so you can extend it with whatever shenanigans your kids might
require.

[0] [http://smallbasic.com/](http://smallbasic.com/) [1]
[http://smallbasic.com/program/?TETRIS](http://smallbasic.com/program/?TETRIS)

------
carlmcqueen
I learned to program on Texas Instruments calculators in the same form as this
seven year old's application, I made really elaborate choose your own
adventure games with if statements.

~~~
rbanffy
My first programs were for a TI-55 calculator. No conditional jumps, only a
RST that restarted the program with data intact, so you could do some tricks.

I managed to make it solve second-degree equations in less than 33 steps
(using the RST jump to re-run part of the program on modified data). Without
the trick it'd require, IIRC, 35 steps, which were beyond the limits of that
model.

------
mosburger
GW-BASIC (QBasic's kinda sorta ancestor) was my first programming language
(well, other than Logo I suppose). I still have a soft spot for it and might
not be a programmer today if I hadn't first learned on such an easy-to-grok-
for-11-year-old-me language.

I've toyed with writing my own GW-BASIC interpreter for yucks (because I've
never written an interpreter) but never gotten around to it. Perhaps I
should... I've been meaning to learn Rust, maybe that'd be a good excuse?

------
JustSomeNobody
Huge props to Noah for keeping an actual paper developers journal!

------
partisan
This made me smile. I remember trying to learn coding at 6 or 7 from my Tandy
56K Basic manual. I didn't get it but I tried all the same. It would have been
cool to have someone there to help me understand.

It's a fortunate thing to have common interests with your child. I can't wait
to have my daughters show even the slightest interest in coding. They are
toddlers, so I have to just wait.

~~~
organsnyder
I was around the same age. My dad was a big ZBasic fan, and he had me copying
BASIC games out of a book and getting them to run, on our Tandy 1000. My
oldest is 5, and I'm trying to figure out the best time to expose him to it.
With the entertainment-focused nature of computing we have now, I can't rely
on the lack of distractions that were present with a non-networked computer
with a monochrome display. Right now, we don't even have a regular computer
for him to play around with—my wife and I have our own laptops—so I think the
first step is setting up a desktop machine that the kids can fool around with.

~~~
drhayes9
I've had a lot of success with a Raspberry Pi 3 and a 15" monitor. My 3 1/2
year old learned how to use a mouse nearly instantly and can click around on
the desktop.

The Pi is $35 and has HDMI out and lots of USB ports. It's pretty great.

~~~
organsnyder
I almost bought a Pi for my son when he turned five, but then I decided to
hold off (he didn't seem mature enough to be trusted with it yet). I want each
of my kids to have a device that they can use how they please—whether it be
playing Minecraft or tinkering with the hardware (including destroying it—I
broke quite a few computers growing up...).

What software do you have running on the Pi for your 3.5-year-old?

~~~
drhayes9
Well... the Kano distro is pretty good for "I'm gonna learn how to type and
move around the computer". [1] They have a build-a-computer kit and are coming
out with a screen soon? It's a little old for my son, though. It really wants
you to type things which is great except he can't read yet.

A colleague of mine had a lot of success with Edubuntu. [2] Her six-year-old
is a whiz at the command line. Again with the keyboard use, so not quite
appropriate.

I'm still looking, basically. He likes clicking around and seeing that he's
having an effect on things, but he usually ends up at YouTube, which isn't so
great.

[1]: kano.me

[2]: [https://www.edubuntu.org/](https://www.edubuntu.org/)

------
partycoder
As a person who taught himself programming (and a bit of English) with QBasic,
and also have known many people that did the same. I agree with this article.

But you have other BASICs such as the one for computers such as the ZX
Spectrum.

Python in my opinion can also be used to teach programming, since many high
level constructs are optional and syntax is simple.

------
aurelian15
I couldn't agree more. I started programming with QBasic -- basically teaching
myself on my own -- when I was seven. And it worked. I was programming little
interactive stories, drew crazy stuff on the screen, wrote small games. I was
happy with it. The only things I was always curious about (and know one I knew
back then could help me with) was on how to access the computer's mouse and
the sound blaster. With my limited knowledge I never got that working until I
switched to Delphi and Windows four years later.

One of the best things I remember about QBasic is the help system (also
referred to in the article). This where I found everything I wanted to know,
including examples, about the language. I believe that's one of the reasons
why I'm still more patient when it comes to studying software documentation
compared to the average programmer.

------
edtechdev
Try to teach your kids programming this way, and you are more than likely only
going to turn them off programming for many years. There is actual research on
teaching kids how to code.

Personally, I would start with code.org or Scratch. If you have an ipad, there
is Hopscotch. Here is a huge list of more tools to teach young kids
programming: [http://bit.ly/ortonacode](http://bit.ly/ortonacode)

But if you start with basic or python, you'll be teaching them that coding is
basically similar to solving boring puzzles - not of any real use, and not as
fun as videogames.

Start instead with something they would find motivating or useful, not you.
Making a game, or creating a useful little app/tool that solves some problem
they think is important, etc.

~~~
sharpneli
Boring puzzles? The very original article showed what kind of programs the kid
made. Far from boring puzzle.

When I was 8-9 I started with QBasic with the first program being pretty much
identical as what the kid in the article did. Then we did text adventures with
friends. They were simply awesome back then. Then we moved to graphics as we
figured out how to draw lines etc. Animation was beyond us but managing to
draw something was brilliant.

Around 12 it was C and games by using Allegro, and getting into slight trouble
due to the nature of them. But it would not have been possible without first
learning the basic stuff in QBasic (Oh the amount of IF blocks was ridiculous
in some of the games).

~~~
szatkus
When I was 10 and known Basic only from book I was wondering what would happen
with that code:

    
    
        10 echo "hello"
        20 goto 10
    

After trying that I was quite disappointed that computers are that stupid...

------
jay_kyburz
I'm a bit late to the party on this one but if you are looking for a great way
for kids to learn basic and make video games, check out
[http://www.blitzbasic.com/](http://www.blitzbasic.com/)

------
agumonkey
Last month I reconnected with QBasic, was surprised about the live formatter
and linter. And the pseudo module handling. Each function being seen as a
separate entity.

Sorry MS, I didn't understand how valuable it was.

------
jordan0day
One of my disappointments with the original Raspberry Pi was that I felt that
its genesis story was from people whose early experience with programming came
from Apple II's and QBASIC. It was pitched as a way to expose kids today to
that same kind of low-overhead, get-in-and-start-making-things-happen
experience some of us had 25 years ago.

Imagine my disappointment when the Pi's getting started experience was "Boot
into a graphical window manager, open up the Python IDE, start writing
Python..."

~~~
lsllc
The RPi guy(s) grew up on BBC BASIC:

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-
bas...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-50-years-of-basic/)

------
z3t4
I think Qbasic was so fun because it was easy do do graphics. Doing graphics
in any other language is just insanely hard as you have to understand
_university_ grade math.

------
someone_
I agree- we should also have just as easy of a way to start off with drawing.

Why do we need to install 50 frameworks, tell a window how to spawn, basically
create a universe just to start experimenting with creating computer graphics?
It's a (Width x Height) matrix of RGB values-- why can't we get a simple way
to create a simple 100x100 box for kids to draw in?

No reason your son couldn't tell a screen to print colored pixels in RGB value
with the right syntax.

~~~
bglazer
[https://processing.org/](https://processing.org/)

I absolutely love Processing. It's a subset of Java with a dead simple IDE.
Bonus points for exporting to Android, javascript, and executable jars for the
desktop. Comes with excellent examples. The community is generally quite
supporting and open as well.

And to answer your question "why can't we get a simple way to create a simple
100x100 box for kids to draw in?"

Here's the processing code that does exactly that:

void setup() { size(100,100) }

That pops a blank 100x100 box onto the screen. Drawing a line is line(start_x,
start_y, end_x, end_y).

Adding interactivity and animation is as simple as adding:

void draw(){ ... do stuff ... }

You, and everyone else, should check it out.

~~~
ptrkrlsrd
Processing is a great and fun way to learn programming! I learned it that way,
and I found that it kept my interest cause I could use it in a creative way
while it also was easy to use.

------
demarq
I learnt Qbasic not that long ago it was my first taste of programming.
However back then I couldn't afford a computer, so I had this Qbasic book and
just had to 'imagine' how my programs run.

Fast forward 13ish years and I own my own mac and know more programming
languages than most of my workmates :) Although now I try and specialize in
just three Rust, Javascript and Python to avoid being the 'master of none'.

------
vmorgulis
BASIC-256 is a good alternative to QBasic:
[http://www.basic256.org/index_en](http://www.basic256.org/index_en)

The voice synthesis with the "say" command is impressive:
[http://doc.basic256.org/doku.php?id=en:say](http://doc.basic256.org/doku.php?id=en:say)

Say "Hello, World" (instead of Print...)

------
nxzero
Key to get people coding, doesn't matter what the language, platform, etc. is
in my opinion. Think I've worked in more than 20 or 30 languages to help
someone new to programming write some programs. Each language has it own set
of strengths and weaknesses, but normally my experience is that the person
having a choice, is really important to them sticking with it.

------
ajuc
I introduced my 10 years old cousin to turbo pascal when we met a few years
ago. It took less than 3 hours to download it, install (also the patches to
run on modern computer), make a game where you can move a circle around the
screen, and teach him how can he modify it and how basic syntax works.

There's nothing like that in modern programming. Python comes close, but is
too magical.

~~~
bigger_cheese
My Dad taught me Turbo Pascal when I was about 7 or 8 years old, this was the
early 90's msdos environment. I wrote one or two very simple programs got
bored and moved on to other things. I just didn't have the attention span for
it at that age.

When I was 13 I taught myself html. I used to write webpages by opening up
notepad in Windows 95 and typing in all the tags (frames tables even the
dreaded blink tag). I consider this my first real experience with programming.

------
eric001
Wow... good job man. My first experience with programming was QBasic, and that
was about 16 years ago. I only did it for a couple of weeks but when I picked
up on programming several years later as a young adult, it all came back to me
- assigning variables from user inputs, printing on screen, if then else, all
the basics. Good stuff!

------
ErikAugust
That is awesome!

It is not surprising that Noah's desire to program comes from his desire to
make games. That's where I got my start, with QBASIC ~20 years ago.

Before that, I remember wanting to take a Entenmann's Donut box and put action
figures on sticks to make my own analog fighting game.

How many of you got into programming because of a desire to make games?

------
agentgt
I think Racket comes close but is still a little more adult.

I remember going to GaTech early 2000 and there was a teacher named Guzdial
pushing Squeek like it was gods gift to children and humanity. There is
nothing wrong with the language but I have yet to see kids use it or like it.
I have seen high school kids use racket though.

------
rbanffy
Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de
Chassilier wine?

------
epicmellon
Oh man I am having a nostalgia heart attack right now. I remember coding a
"guy shooting falling aliens from the bottom of the screen" game and
hilariously having the aliens move not only through a timer but ALSO when you
moved since there was no threading. Classic.

------
darkstalker
I also started with BASIC. First was Commodore BASIC and then QBasic. I
remember there was also LOGO, one of the original didactic languages. IMHO, if
you want a simple language in the same spirit as BASIC, the closest you can
find is Lua.

------
dudul
My post won't add much to the discussion, but QBasic was also my very first
language. I was a little older than Noah when I first used it (I think I was
~12/13) and I still remember having so much fun with it :)

------
mark-r
So who will do an equivalent of QBasic for the web? It seems that the language
is simple enough to be implemented entirely in Javascript. Then you wouldn't
have to deal with the hassle of installing.

~~~
recursive
You mean javascript? It's already implemented in your browser.

~~~
mark-r
No, I mean implementing a full Basic interpreter in Javascript. For
nostalgia's sake, or for teaching the kids, as in the article.

~~~
ef4
No need to reimplement. The original QBasic runs in your browser:
[https://archive.org/details/msdos_qbasic_megapack](https://archive.org/details/msdos_qbasic_megapack)

------
thedaemon
I remember learning to program with QBasic as well. It was so much fun as a
kid. I painstakingly drew out full scenes with line and circle commands for a
small text based adventure game. Good times.

------
artur_makly
im getting my toddler started with this RL code.
[http://www.primotoys.com/cubetto](http://www.primotoys.com/cubetto)

------
kazinator
I tried (+ 2 2) on a four-year-old once.

Instant, complete acceptance; no complaints about parentheses or lack of infix
or anything.

~~~
copperx
There was no previous assumptions there that caused impediment for learning.

------
mgalka
“OMG please don’t teach him GOTOs!!”

GOTOs are easy to abuse, but they would really come in handy sometimes.

------
pabsferrari
My first language too! haha PRINT "Welcome to the club Noah!"

Great insights for education

------
Annatar
BASIC:

an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

Yep, I'd say that checks out.

------
liveoneggs
of course:
[http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/](http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/)
chipmunk basic

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jeremywen
sonic pi was created for this very purpose - to teach kids to code -
[http://sonic-pi.net/](http://sonic-pi.net/)

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adamwong246
Man, I wish I'd kept some of my .bas files.

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jedateach
:') My first code was written in QBasic

------
spriggan3
Rebol ?

~~~
draegtun
Yes Rebol is a great language to teach kids, especially Rebol/View
([http://rebol.com/docs/easy-vid.html](http://rebol.com/docs/easy-vid.html)).

Below is an example of it _draw_ dialect:

    
    
      view layout [
        box 320x200 effect [
          draw [
            pen black 
            line 20x20 80x80
          ]
        ]
      ]
    

Many more drawing examples can be found here -
[http://www.rebol.com/docs/draw.html](http://www.rebol.com/docs/draw.html)

------
nhlx2
Emacs, then elisp perhaps?

------
EugeneOZ
My first language too :)

------
username3
QBASIC.js

QBASICScript

QBASIC in a browser

~~~
Hortinstein
done

[http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=92](http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=92)

------
guard-of-terra
I don't think that QBasic is so bad as procedural language.

All the primitives are there and I've never written any code with much GOTOs
in them. Just did not feel the need even when I was 10 years old.

What this article clearly lacks is

    
    
        SCREEN 13
    

Seriously, unsurpassed easiness of programmable graphics. Even by javascript,
which is otherwise better for teaching.

~~~
manifestsilence
Absolutely, this is what I miss, both for myself and for teaching youngsters.
Not even Python or Javascript has an easy way to just get a full screen canvas
that lets you set RGB colors onto pixels and draw shapes.

The python way is to import pygame and get mired in page flipping, creating
canvases, creating your own event loop, etc.

The javascript way is to create an HTML5 canvas, learn how to get page
elements and store them in a variable, and where to put your code so it will
run at the right time, etc.

Both have so much scaffolding before you can just create some procedural
graphics and begin to reason about x and y coordinates in a way that's fun and
shows the power of programming visually.

My hobby with QBasic was making variations on Conway's Game of Life. So easy
and fun in that language compared to anything else.

~~~
ajosh
Some screen modes[1] like screen 9 actually had page flipping as an option.
You could write to the "back" screen buffer and then switch which buffer was
shown. I used that to make a poor man's strobe light.

I really miss the simplicity of QBasic sometimes.

[1]
[http://www.qb64.net/wiki/index.php/SCREEN_(statement)](http://www.qb64.net/wiki/index.php/SCREEN_\(statement\))

------
camperman
Wonderful post. I did something similar for my younger daughter and one of her
friends with Lua and Love2d. In just a couple of hours they had written a
Breakout clone and also understood every line of code. Very satisfying.

------
imakesnowflakes
I think kids should not be actively encouraged to learn to code early.

You can learn to code any time, when you are older. As far as I can see, there
is no advantage in learning to code early.

But there are skills you need to pick up, and experience that you can only
have when you are a kid. Let us encourage to kids to do those stuff..

------
bitJericho
The Monkey X programming language is a great alternative to qbasic. It's
simple to install, cross platform, procedural, OOP, and incredibly powerful
the more you get to know it.

------
thrownear
Less about Qbasic and why it is still the best and more about a parent
bragging about their kid doing stuff with computers so early.

I mean, just make the title "my kid wrote a text game in Qbasic" and do your
bragging there. No problem..

