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Comment by idle_zealot | Hacker News Reader

I've been dismissive of BASIC as an outdated and terrible language since reading some old programs written in it. But reading the docs and examples for FreeBasic actually make it look decent. Static typing, decent syntax, and I don't even have to start all my lines with 10 20 30 so I can JUMP to them!

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Serious question: What makes BASIC BASIC? I don't see anything in the FreeBasic example code that looks anything like what GWBASIC was 40 years ago. No line numbers and not a single GOTO. Is there still support for compiling old style BASIC or did the BASIC name move on to mean something completely different from what it used to?

That reminds me: There’s PC-BASIC available for all platforms that emulates GW-BASIC:

https://robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/

Since I’m kind of a data hoarder, I’ve put my GW-BASIC files from the early 90s on GitHub:

https://github.com/mbirth/gwbasic

In this particular case, FreeBasic was written in Visual BASIC for DOS 1.0 until it could compile itself. But you're right that some of the original syntax it's added (e.g. C-style pointers) takes it a bit away from what BASIC was.

Yeah, BASIC started out painfully primitive, but it did eventually get pretty decent structured programming features (say, GOSUB with labels instead of just GOTO)

there are some BASIC dialects that can give other modern languages a run for their money. Check out on of my favs: https://www.cerberus-x.com/cxDocs/Programming_Language%20ref...

"Cerberus X is a high level programming language based on the popular 'Blitz' range of languages, and was inspired by both Java for its streamlined language, and BASIC for its readability."

Interesting language. I've never heard of Java as streamlined though ;)

Sounds like an in-joke :D I wonder if it's one of those "don't be like Java" things!

That would be hilarious

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