
Ask HN: Do you program in Basic? - vanilla-almond
If so, what flavour of Basic? (PowerBasic, PureBasic, VB.NET, or some custom flavour)<p>What are your reasons for using Basic? Do you enjoy it? How do other developers react when you tell them you program in Basic?
======
Spearchucker
I wrote my first complete computer program on a Vic 20 in Commodore BASIC 2,
in 1986. My first paid program in 1990, using Thoroughbred BASIC on a PC.
Since then I've programmed (or scripted) in Assembler, BASIC, C, C#, C++,
COBOL, F#, HTML, Java, JavaScript, LOGO, Pascal, SQL, VBA and XAML. I don't
mind C#. Or Java. I stopped programming for my income around 2005 when I moved
into architecture and then went the CTO route. Did take on another programming
contract in 2011 though, because it was Nokia. Still write a lot of my own
code though, and now exclusively in VB.NET because

\- VB.NET supports both static and dynamic typing.

\- VB.NET is a functional language, supporting local type inference, anonymous
functions, monads, and language integrated comonads.

\- VB.NET does project-wide namespace imports. C# doesn't.

\- I like creating native client apps, and dislike the constraints and
fragility of web apps.

\- I've always found the Java developer environment to be brittle in
comparison.

There are also a metric ton of readability issues in JS, Java and C# that
VB.NET doesn't have (braces, == and =, ! instead of Not, separate keywords for
inheritance and interface implementation, and so on). I also concede that I
learnt Pascal before learning C (and prefer Pascal to C). The fact that Pascal
and VB.NET share syntactical similarities (type declarations follow variable
and function names, the Not keyword is probably not an insignificant factor.

And to be fair none of the above matter – the rationale came long after the
fact that I use BASIC simply because I like BASIC.

The amount of disapproval, verbal abuse, ridicule and actual anger I've
received for this over the years (and to this day) is insane. But you learn to
deal with it.

PS. Did you know that the first prototype of Nokia Maps for Windows Phone was
written in VB.NET? Nokia didn't know either, because they had like zero
Windows Phone skills at the time.

~~~
noir_lord
I'm guessing we are about the same age, my first BASIC program was on a speccy
in 1986, once we got a family PC I moved to Pascal and other than some VB6 at
college in the late 90's haven't touched basic since, I still have a soft spot
for Object Pascal (Delphi) though.

------
simonblack
I might, very rarely, do some maintenance of a BASIC program these days. And
that would be because the program I am using might require some minor
tweaking.

But invariably, I do all my new programming in C.

The flavor of BASIC I used to use is North Star Disk BASIC, very similar to HP
BASIC.

A few lines from an old project:

    
    
          1 REM*** THIS PROGRAM CONVERTS A 8080 PROGRAM INTO AN ASMB LISTING*****
         10 DIM A7(256),B7(256),A7$(512),B7$(10*256),B8(256)
         15 DIM K7$(20)
         20 A7$=""\B7$=""
         30 !\!"   FILECRAK: Disassembles 8080 opcode programs"\!
         50 FOR M=1 TO 256
         60 READ A,A$,B,B$
         70 B8(M)=LEN(B$)
         80 B$=B$+"           "
         90 A7$=A7$+A$\B7$=B7$+B$
         100 A7(M)=A\B7(M)=B
         110 NEXT M
         120 INPUT " File name of 8080 program:",V$\!
         130 CLOSE#1\ OPEN#1%1,V$,L6
         135 OPEN#5,"ASSEMBLE"
         140 L6=L6*256
         150 INPUT " 8080 op-codes begin at:",L$
         160 INPUT " Begin disassembling at:",J$
         170 !
         180 INPUT " Output to printer? ",H9$

------
gus_massa
Clasic VB, (aka VB6). Each year it is more difficult to install the IDE, but
the runtime is still installed by default.

It is incredible easy to build a nice one screen application with not very a
very complicated background logic. Normal people like a nice graphical
interface with a few buttons, and with Classic VB you can create them very
easily and iterate and customize the form.

My last big problem was that it doesn't have a build in sort function, so you
can use a n^2 sort or write a good sorting function by hand :( . When the
logic start to be not so easy, there begin to apear problems.

~~~
scarface74
Why not just use VB.Net/Winforms?

~~~
kd5bjo
Microsoft made fundamental changes to the Visual Basic language in order to
make it run on the CLR, to the point that it feels more like an alternative
syntax for C# than the successor of VB6– the superficial similarity between 6
and .Net caused lots of false-friend problems during he transition and most
projects would have been better served by being rewritten in C#.

~~~
alkonaut
What were the biggest benefits that people got from switching? Where does VB6
most show it’s age? No modern looking controls? Harder to use Unicode?

~~~
kd5bjo
A lot of VB programming was connecting together 3rd-party COM components,
which had to be written in C/C++. After the CLR came along, those vendors
slowly stopped supporting VB6 with their new releases as they moved their
codebases and workflow to the new system.

~~~
pjmlp
That was only true for early VB versions.

VB6 had full support for native AOT compilation and creation of OCXs in pure
VB code.

------
RedNifre
Kinda, I'm currently learning Idris and compilers by writing a CommodoreBASIC
compiler that targets the HP 15-C calculator:
[https://gitlab.com/michaelzinn/voyc](https://gitlab.com/michaelzinn/voyc)

Compiler output looks like this:

    
    
      227 IF Q>0 THEN 230......................................................90 1
                                                                               91 0
                                                                               92 8
                                                                               93 CHS
                                                                               94 STO I
                                                                               95 0
                                                                               96 RCL .1
                                                                               97 TEST 7
                                                                               98 GTO I
      228 P=INT(P/2)...........................................................99 RCL 9
                                                                               100 2
                                                                               101 /
                                                                               102 INT
                                                                               103 STO 9
    

So far, I can compile Hammurabi, but I actually haven't written any BASIC
programs myself yet (except some simple QBasic stuff in the last millennium).

I get the games to compile from the old "101 BASIC Computer Games" book:
[http://vintage-basic.net/games.html](http://vintage-basic.net/games.html)

------
kerng
I liked BASIC, but haven't done anything with it since Microsoft cut Visual
Basic 6 - wish they had open sourced it back in the day. It probably would
have thrived. I might have written some VB Script at times afterwards (for
security testing) but not really using other than that.

So, no BASIC project since 1999 for me. VB had cool editor, amazing debugging
capabilities (still not matched by anything these days, we are often even
going backwards with new languages) and was great for developing and
visualizing data tier apps quickly - or "rapidly" how it was called back then.

First programs I wrote were in BASIC on Amstrad CPC and Commodore computers.
Fun times.

~~~
iforgotpassword
I agree. VB6 was limited (in some parts in pretty idiotic ways), but for
prototyping and simple GUIs it was far ahead of anything else. While I do
think modern IDEs do have more powerful debugging features it was really good
for its time, and the IDE was super snappy. Even on some slow P133 you'd type
an object's name and as soon as you hit '.' you got the list of methods, no
perceivable delay.

The move to .NET made the language more involved, imo to a point where there
was no reason not to just use C#.

~~~
Pamar
... _but for prototyping and simple GUIs it was far ahead of anything else_...

Better than Delphi? This is out of genuine curiosity because I have basically
zero experience with both.

~~~
RantyDave
Yes, but only just. Delphi was a saner language and IIRC faster, too. Both of
them blew the modern web front end tools into the weeds. Twenty five years
ago.

------
dexterlagan
I have been using Xojo (Former REALBasic) for about 10 years to code database-
driven business apps for several businesses with great success.

I also use x86 asm, Rust, Racket, NewLisp, Scheme, C, Python, JavaScript and
shell script (sed, Perl etc) for other clients and uses. Xojo lets me compile
for Win, Mac, Linux from the same install, the syntax is delightfully simple
to use and to teach. Performance beats interpreted languages (LLVM-based), it
compiles to standalone bins that do not rely on .NET, unlike Visual Studio.
When I need more power I simply embed a lisp (Chicken or NewLisp) as the
provided FFI works well. I’m currently writing a new IDE for NewLisp with Xojo
and it’s handling UTF8 like a champ.

Xojo is very mature and most of the bugs have been squashed long ago, I just
wish it treated functions as first class citizens. Apart from that, for
internal business apps and retail-quality Win/Mac UI apps, I honestly haven’t
found anything more effective to go from prototype to binary quickly and
painlessly.

It’s our secret weapon, and clients don’t care it isn’t mainstream. Now if one
could come up with a similar IDE coupled with a lisp... DrRacket + MrEd come
close, but for large projects it becomes a pain. Until then I’ll write basic
code for basic business apps. For everything else, there’s a lisp.

~~~
tuesday20
Can you link to one of the applications you built using xojo?

~~~
bigtunacan
Here's a link to some apps built in Xojo.

[https://www.xojo.com/resources/examples.php](https://www.xojo.com/resources/examples.php)

------
zhte415
Excel also. Sometimes, in a locked-down corporate environment but where every
PC comes with a pretty powerful language and IDE built-in, it's simply easier
to DIY than go through a process of approval and budgets. This does raise the
very good question of maintainability and legacy use after I'm gone, a medium
term solution is to ensure others proficient in VBA and computer science in
general are on the team, and a long term auditable solution to ensure the
process being automated stays documented and not _magic_. I enjoy VBA,
combined with Excel it can do a lot.

~~~
amiga_500
I had to do a mockup of a gui recently for traders, and excel did the job. Not
a nice programming language, but fast to get something working. It won't be
used in prod, thank god!

------
rkagerer
Such nostalgia!

My enchantment with BASIC began when I was 10, and on the bus to summer camp
every morning I'd read this dog-eared book:

[https://imgur.com/a/kmBfx7Y](https://imgur.com/a/kmBfx7Y)

I was such a nerd. The counselors didn't know what to make of me. Dad
complained I should spend more time outside.

Then I grew up and published my first commercial software title, turning that
geeky addiction into a career. It was an Outlook addin, created in VB6 around
the time a prominent Microsoft MVP called Outlook the _" buggiest program to
ever come out of Redmond"_ (source:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20091231043608/http://www.slipst...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091231043608/http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2004/up041210.htm)).
So in the next rewrite, I created a framework to bring Try/Catch semantics to
the language along with stack-tracing error logging - after testing and
discarding several equally buggy third party tools purporting to do the same.

I gained some hard-learned lessons about instrumentation, coding for
readability and debugability, and the importance of good tooling. They've
stuck with me to this day, and although most of my work now is in C#, the
principles are the same.

Thanks mom and dad for buying me that beat up old TRS-80! And thanks Mr.
Kemeny and Kurtz for bestowing this beautifully approachable language onto the
world, even if your original vision was shamefully bastardized by the time I
stumbled upon it.

ps. That book in all its glory:
[http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Manuals/H...](http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Manuals/Hardware/Getting%20Started%20With%20Extended%20Color%20Basic%20%28Tandy%29.pdf)

------
seisvelas
The QBasic community is excellent and pretty active (peaked around 2008 or so,
though). Check out [http://www.petesqbsite.com/](http://www.petesqbsite.com/)
to learn more.

~~~
tetraca
Pete's QB Site is what got me into programming and Vic's game design tutorials
is what got everything to "click" for me. I left ages ago, but the QBasic
community was a wonderful place, and I owe a lot to them.

------
jhallenworld
I recently did a project involving the "Mint BASIC" embedded in the NextMove
ESB-2 motion controllers from ABB. The BASIC was used to communicate between
the embedded motion controller library and a Linux system over an RS-232
serial port. Linux was running ROS with code in C++ and Python.

The ESB-2 also had a USB port, but only worked with an Active-X control in
Windows. So by using Mint BASIC we avoiding having to use Windows.

Mint BASIC is a clone of VB and I thought the syntax was pretty nice. It had
some weird things like a.2=3 is the same as a[2]=3. Also a[2,3,4]=7 is the
same as a[2]=7, a[3]=7, a[4]=7.

------
pushpop
I own a bunch of retro machines and use them to teach my kids BASIC (and
LOGO). Sometimes I’d do a bit of coding on there myself for a bit of fun.

Sometimes I do catch myself “thinking in BASIC” when writing coding with
C-style syntax. In that rather than saying:

    
    
       For brackets I equals zero semicolon....
    

Instead I’ll say

    
    
       For I equals zero to n
    

(Similarly for function blocks / “End Function” too).

For all it’s warts, BASIC can read a little like pseudocode.

Edit: it probably comes as no surprise that even until the late 90s I still
preferred writing code in Pascal than I did in C.

------
gbuk2013
My longest-lived piece of code is the Excel VBA code I write for my Dad’s
company over 20 years ago. I built a custom export documentation generator for
his export business, with centralised price list with individual prices for
customers, stock control and production tracking. It is still in use, more
than 20 years on. Scary and awesome at the same time!

Submitted a simplified version of it as part of my IT coursework in college
and got top marks in the class. ;)

~~~
frou_dh
An alternate meaning of code reuse. Recycle as coursework!

------
BjoernKW
Occasionally, I do, that is when writing Excel macros in VBA (Visual Basic for
Applications, Microsoft's Visual Basic flavour for macros).

The reason why I do this is that the - for better or for worse - the world
runs on Excel and some things (e.g. reporting, ad-hoc conversion of CSV data),
especially one-off solutions (I know, nothing lasts as long as a prototype in
production ...), are faster to implement in Excel and will also be more
readily accepted by users because Excel often is what they know already.

The language is alright, the IDE within Excel, less so. I try to write VBA in
a maintainable manner but especially with Excel's macro recording feature it's
possible to create quite messy code. Macro recording is fantastic for
bootstrapping functionality but you have to edit the resulting code if you
want it to be maintainable further down the road.

Other developers often frown upon Visual Basic and don't consider writing VBA
code in particular to be "proper software development" but it gets the job
done and that's what counts.

------
jonathanstrange
My most productive time as a non-professional programmer was when I used
REALBasic. That was when it was affordable shareware, before it became
insanely expensive and got the totally silly name "Xojo".

REALBasic was better than any other language in terms of productivity and no
language/framework combination has matched that for me so far. I used to be
very active in the REALBasic community and was able to make fully working
applications within a few hours. That meant that I had time to spent on
details that no current applications have. For example, my application used to
give visual feedback to any action, including blinking menu items, blinking
selections when text was copied, and so on. Contrary to what people claimed
even then, carefully-planned applications also had way less bugs than they
have in any language I use nowadays. REALBasic was also way better as a
language than what C++ people used to say about it, it was fully structured,
had OOP, and was overall pleasant to use. It definitely gave better results
faster than other frameworks, and RB's OOP was a perfect fit for end-consumer,
GUI-oriented applications.

Nowadays, I do own Purebasic, but since it's not structured and has no genuine
cross-platform support for rich text in edit fields, I barely use it. I
currently use Go with GTK3, but the combo is way worse and not even comparable
to REALBasic (no RAD). The only viable alternative seems to be Python with Qt,
but the results are horribly slow and the language is just ugly. I've also
been using Racket for many years and the latest version of my (very outdated,
long-term maintenance) shareware application is still written in it, but there
are too many GUI limitations and performance problems to recommend it.

Bottom line is that I miss the good old "an unhandled NIL object exception has
occurred" days. Lazarus is not a good substitute either.

~~~
archi42
If python & Qt is an option, then why not (modern) C++ & Qt?

Genuine question. QBasic was my first programming language, and I learned C++
only during university. Looking at older code at my job I think I'm lucky to
have missed a lot of language-uglyness (we have some legacy code samples that
are basically some compiler-specific dialect of C89; feels totally different
than C++11).

~~~
RantyDave
Modern C++ is a big jump in the right direction, but you still have to compile
and link it.

~~~
pjmlp
Still it is not so bad on Windows with either C++ Builder or Visual C++, with
all incremental options turned on.

Other platforms never invested that much in C++ build performance.

In any case, hopefully modules will make it better.

------
stevekemp
I wrote a BASIC interpreter in golang, and have amused myself programming in
it. There's an example which embeds the interpreter into a HTTP-server, so you
can open your browser, and enter BASIC code to draw images.

Naturally enough I call this "visual basic" ;)

I've not "seriously" programmed in BASIC for decades, but this was still
enough to make me smile and feel nostalgic.

------
opportune
I first learned to program playing with TI-BASIC on my TI-84 calculator in
high school.

I would never recommend it for a new, fully fledged software project these
days. But I would consider it a great learning tool. Can't speak to other
BASIC dialects, but TI-BASIC to me was perfect due to how limited the syntax
was, and because of the TI-84 interface, to program directly on the calculator
you had to select the keywords from a menu interface, which was great for
feature discovery. Even if you weren't programming in a menu interface, you
could probably have a single page keyword cheatsheet/language spec sitting
alongside you to remind you of basically everything supported by the language.

To this day, I suppose I wouldn't completely scoff at someone who was using
BASIC for very basic scripting or doing a quick computation. It is still kind
of enjoyable due to how simple it is, and I'm guessing non-professionals
probably could figure out what it's doing as long as the program is short
enough.

------
dusted
I wrote a little bit of basic on C64, but I was around 9 years old and din't
understand English well (I'm Danish).

Later, I found QBasic and spent a few hundred hours messing around in that,
the built-in index and manual with examples made it extremely nice for me, as
I could always try out things where I didn't understand what they did from the
description (still lacking English skills at that point). I mostly wrote stuff
that used the lowres graphics mode and put stuff on screen, and a tic-tac-toe
game (every move was hardcoded, I didn't know of algorithms at that time).

I never did anything interesting with it, but it seeded my curiosity in
programming, probably made it a lot easier for me to understand stuff like
variables and calling functions when I moved to PHP, and later C.

I've worked the past 10 years as a programmer, and I think I owe a bit of that
to basic.

------
AdrianB1
I stopped writing Basic about 5 years ago. I started with Commodore Basic in
the late eighties, wrote some tools for personal use, but my first income apps
were in COBOL (really) and FoxPro. I had to write Basic again in ~ 2000 for
work, a bit of VB but mostly VBA in Access and Excel and I completely gave up
when I found better ways to do it. Today we have a single VB app at work that
I plan to have it rewritten, but mostly because we have not enough people to
support and modify it when needed. While Basic was a good tool in my
childhood, it is hard these days to find good software engineers willing to
use it, tools good enough to use and people willing to pay for apps written in
Basic.

------
rcar1046
Classic ASP for me still, although I believe I'm reaching the sunset here with
IIS 6 on a Windows 2003 server still being feasible.

Why not change? I know the language so well, and have so many things I can
reuse...ok...fear of change.

You can get pretty much anything done with classic ASP still though. Here are
a few of my sites both done with only classic ASP server side.

[http://www.dudeiwantthat.com/](http://www.dudeiwantthat.com/)
[https://stockdaddy.io/](https://stockdaddy.io/)

Now, Jquery has moved some things I would previously do server side to client
side, but these are basically classic ASP, SQL Server driven sites.

------
pjmlp
Occasionally I still touch VB.NET, but to be fair it is more related to
migrate code from old VB6 into .NET world.

As info, I used Timex 2068 Basic, 48K Basic, GW-Basic, Turbo Basic, AMOS, GFA
Basic, QBasic, QuickBasic and VB as well.

And yes, with the native code compiled versions of Basic it was even possible
to do system level like programming back then.

So Basic has a special place for me, even if I barely used today.

Also ignore the naysayers about VB.NET vs VB6, there are plenty of features
that are comparable, usually what was left behind were GW-Basic and QuickBasic
compatibility features.

Just think that even F# doesn't have the amount of platform love that VB.NET
enjoys on VS tooling.

------
pedasmith
Yes, I program in my own variant in a calculator app ("Best Calculator, IOT
edition") that I wrote. The calculator is programmable in BASIC; this is a
surprisingly powerful combination.

Writing small programs to automate a calculation is something that should be
accessible to everyone; when I created the BASIC editor and overall system the
goal was to have as few steps between a user thinking "hey I want to automate
this calculation" and having the program be written.

BASIC has a great sweet spot: simple commands, but still a real language. My
version, of course, doesn't require line number and has real functions.

------
Aspos
Excel. Sometimes it is easier to write a couple lines of Basic code than write
a ton of formulas. Sometimes models require some complex logic.

Sometimes it is easier to keep some data in Excel and then convert to JSON
with a simple macro.

------
rdiddly
I use Basic in the form of VBA to automate Excel, and VB.NET on projects that
are already written in it (that I don't have time to port to C#). In other
words, I use it when I'm forced to. I almost always end up resenting it, a
little or a lot. I don't like the verbosity, among other things. And VBA in
particular lacks a lot of what I would consider essential infrastructure.

Not to shit on my early days learning programming. Basic was my 2nd language,
and even after years away, I was able to jump right back into it. But once you
learn how to walk, crawling loses its appeal.

------
jedisct1
My best and biggest projects were written in GfA-BASIC. This language was both
very productive, and fun to use.

I could also predict exactly how each line would be translated by the
compiler, and that enabled interesting hacks and optimization techniques.

Kinda like Ruby, BASIC let you express what you want in an intuitive way
rather than constantly try to work around the restrictions imposed by the
language. There are many ways to do the same thing. None is good or bad.

When it comes to being fun, expressive and productive, Ruby is the only
language that comes close to BASIC.

------
bernardv
Learned BASIC on the Sinclair ZX81, then BBC model B. Did a ton of VB6 which
was great and then on to VB.NET. Also a lot of Excel VBA.

The ability to knock-up great GUI’s using Visual Studio’s WinForms was
extremely valuable, having to develop trading desk applications quickly. Then,
Microsoft introduced WPF and that’s where I jumped ship.

VB6 was actually a powerful language, compiler which was highly optimized and
rivaled C++ in terms of performance. It was a highly productive language for
many.

------
smileypete
Surprised no-one has yet mentioned AutoIT, it has a BASIC like syntax and is
fairly well supported. On one level it's like a more accessible wrapper for
Win32 GUI functionality.

Use it for making small programs for fun, the latest to download localised
weather from the BBC and give a 1 liner summary or a longer 7 day forecast in
a simple popup window.

Also use it for mouse gesture type programs, as an alternative to browser
addons or native software.

------
JamesAcorn
About three years ago I knocked up a quick BBC Basic program (RPCemu/RISCOS)
to play around with some dithering algorithms; I ended up painting the
results:

[https://flashasm.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/more-incredibly-
sl...](https://flashasm.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/more-incredibly-slow-
rendering-algorithms-cupcakes-pixel-art/)

------
nurettin
VB scripting is the de-facto macro language up to MS office 2014 (I don't
really know about later versions). It can instantiate COM objects within the
windows environment and through those, parse xml, create json, call web
services and connect to databases. It is one of the reasons why VB still
exists in the industry.

------
jhallenworld
Honoring the creation of BASIC:

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/16/18680941/new-hampshire-
ba...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/16/18680941/new-hampshire-basic-first-
historical-marker-beginners-all-purpose-symbolic-instruction-code)

------
icedchai
BASIC was the first language I learned. First, TI BASIC on a TI99/4A, then
AppleSoft on the Apple II, then AmigaBasic on an Amiga. There was also a bit
of QuickBasic at one point on a DOS system. I also did a bit of VAX Basic on
VAX/VMS! But none of these since the early 90's...

------
_Nat_
VB.NET was one of my first languages. I also used VBA, especially in Excel.

Despite BASIC's intent to be simplistic, I think that C-style syntax is more
intuitive; moving to C# was a great step. Still, VB.NET felt like magic when I
first used it, and VBA is still useful in working with MS-Office documents.

------
iuguy
I still occasionally write ZX Basic and am planning to get back into Blitz
Basic and AMOS later this year. I also have a project lined up using C64 Basic
(but probably mostly asm).

It's a tool like anything else, when it's the right one for the job it's worth
using.

------
kwhitefoot
I use VB.net on existing projects. I use VBA to create applications in
Microsoft Office.

As for how people react, most are well informed enough to understand the
reasons.

I actually enjoy the process of writing VBA because the REPL is so much better
than, for instance, C# in Visual Studio.

------
jetti
I'm curious to hear about the people who are using the commercial Basic
versions (PowerBasic, PureBasic, etc). It is interesting to me that there is
still a market for paid compilers for general purpose languages.

~~~
WaltPurvis
There is a Basic-language IDE called Xojo that has a pretty dedicated user
base. [https://www.xojo.com/](https://www.xojo.com/)

I used to use it extensively (back when it was called REALbasic) and still
occasionally dabble (i.e., tweaking apps I made awhile ago), but it's gotten
much too expensive for hobbyist or "scratching my own itch" kinds of projects,
which is a shame because I still love the language.

~~~
jetti
What kinds of projects did you use REALBasic for?

~~~
WaltPurvis
Dozens. Database front ends. Small utility apps. Graphical interfaces to
manage workflows where the actual work was done with scripting languages.

Almost every app I did was for _either_ the Mac or Windows, but perhaps the
main value prop of REALbasic/Xojo was how easy it was to write one app and
have it run on _both_ Mac & Windows. For small applications, it really did
Just Work, which seemed kind of magical.

~~~
appstorelottery
Wow! The memories - I wrote an OpenGL game in Realbasic for the Mac 15 years
ago... the trouble with Real Software was that they changed the language and
broke backwards compatibility... that turned me off big time. Back in the day
I used Amos on the amiga and Microsoft QBX on the PC to write though-the-
window display software for real estate agents (this was 26 years ago). The
issue with basic in those days was libraries - doing system level stuff (e.g.
using Super VGA graphics required a paid 3rd party library)... ahh the
memories... these days i’m C++ / C# / PHP / etc. although the most fun I’ve
had recently has been with 8088 assembler...

Back in the day basic was frowned upon - but I think these days the stigma is
pretty much gone...

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lgeorget
I learnt to program with VBA for Word and Excel. I found a booklet that my
father got along with another IT magazine. My brother and I started self-
teaching programming this way.

I still occasionally write some VBA macros.

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jay_kyburz
I really enjoyed working in BlitzBasic and later BlitzMax

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

~~~
knotz
In early 2000 I made some small, commercial, games using BlitzBasic and
Blitzmax. Coming from 7+ years programming in C/C++ it was a breeze to work
with. Mark Sibly, the creator BlitzBasic, Blitzmax and Monkey, really has a
talent to make beautiful simple languages.

What I took from those years is that the best tools are those that let you hit
the ground running.

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tonyedgecombe
I embedded VBSScript in one of my applications so get to use that
occasionally. Not for much longer though as I’m encouraging my customers to
switch to PowerShell.

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gerdusvz
visual basic .net I like the more humane/natural syntax compared to c#. There
are also some very nice programmer productivity features like XML literals.

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bitwize
When I'm retrocomputing, sure.

On anything resembling modern hardware, Python is the new BASIC.

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s4n1ty
Python is the Basic we all wanted in the 80s.

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ksherlock
Yes: MD-BASIC. It transpiles to AppleSoft BASIC. It's more enjoyable than
AppleSoft BASIC but it's also enjoyable in its own right.

