Hacker News Reader

Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

I'd place an argument that BASIC still is in many ways one of the best languages for human machine empowerment. I've spent the last 20 years of my life programming, (C, C++, PHP, Java, Go) and I have never felt the overwhelming "I can write anything I want if I try hard enough" I did as a kid writing QBasic on a 286. I wrote literally hundreds of games as a kid with graphics and sound, none of which were over a couple thousand lines of code. The thought of doing any of that in the languages I listed above sounds very complicated at best. I didn't get so lost in the details. We need to take a step back and rethink why we program. For me it is the sheer joy of creation.

View on HN

I tried to rediscover this fun with modern languages in the last year and figured out how to do it:

Don't use most of your language's features.

Write a lengthy main loop. Use a lot of statically-sized arrays. Use plain old data instead of classes. Use primitive types and some indirection instead of a high-powered metaprogramming solution.

If you need the fancy stuff, it's all there (unless you're working with Go) -- but YAGNI really does apply.

I grew up on BASIC as well (TRS-80, Apple II, Atari 800, C64) but I think I'm remembering through rose colored glasses.

A few years ago I tried to write something in "real" BASIC again. GOSUB has no stack and no arguments!? WHAT??? I had forgotten how basic BASIC was.

Go to any high school computer club and all the kids are probably using Unity3D and C# and the stuff they are able to create in a day or 2 blows my mind.

Or watch some kids hack on JavaScript. Access to way more APIs then I ever had back in 8bit BASIC and instant sharing.

>Or watch some kids hack on JavaScript. Access to way more APIs then I ever had back in 8bit BASIC and instant sharing.

Can they press F1 and get instant access to the relevant documentation for those APIs? People who write IDEs for BASIC have always put more care and passion in them - press one button for documentation, press one button to compile and deploy, no messing with XML configuration files, copying boilerplate code, or "manifests".

I did QBasic and then later Visual Basic 3-6. As you mentioned it, I had exactly the same feeling back then when I was a kid that "I can write anything I want if I try hard enough". It was a great feeling. I also felt much more productive than I feel now since I do C++. I always missed that old feeling. I like Python but it still doesn't give the same feeling (for GUI tools or games, anything graphical) - although I think that it might have the potential with better IDEs for that purpose.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com