Basic Dialects, IDEs, and Tutorials | Hacker News Reader

Basic Dialects, IDEs, and Tutorials

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48 pointsandsoitis15 comments

I have used QB64 successfully in the past, to recompile old hobby projects from my teens. Good times...

However, the current QB64.org page looks like AI generated domain parking. It still has a few screenshots where you can maybe see the QB64 uit (?) . But overall it seems to contain meaningless 'believable' ads for courses on programming topics.

So either AI generated bullshit or 'consultants' trying to make a buck from an old/abandoned open source project.

Try https://qb64.com/

ah, great ;-)

If anybody cares to update the title, should be BASIC in all-uppercase.

Lots of interesting gems.

I am missing old BASICs like Turbo Basic, but then again I guess they wouldn't be usefull in modern days.

> they wouldn't be usefull in modern days.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Usefulness, joy.

I think modern BASIC and Pascal environments strike a reasonably good balance where you can write non-industrial programs where you can ignore all the “engineering” and “bureaucratic” processes that support building larger scale systems with many contributors and focus on getting something done or have some fun.

Even industrial, check MIKROE compilers for commercial embedded development, these are in business since the old days.

There was PowerBasic (which is what Turbobasic morphed into) but it's been dead for over a decade at this point.

I've heard good things about PureBASIC [1] but haven't gotten an opportunity to play with it yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureBasic

I can highly recommend PureBasic. Still actively developed and with an active community.

Long list.

It would have been very helpful if the list had been categorized in some way --- some potential divisions which would have helped my looking for a project:

- platform --- esp. SBCs such as the Raspberry Pi

- licensing --- opensource/free/commercial

- text mode/graphical IDE (note that there is a short list of IDEs at the bottom)/GUI development

It would especially have been useful to see what is recommended in this day and age.

Yes, I'd really like to use a basic that is open source but cross platform and compiles to executable. I'm not sure such a thing exists tho!

in that list there is https://smallbasic.github.io/ ... but there may be better options.

One project which is trying very hard is SmallVisualBasic:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ModernVB...

to answer my own question - poking through this list looks like QB64 would do it but also seems they split into 2 projects - QB64 and QB64PE

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