Are there any good, more modern alternatives to Turbo Basic for people who want to get back into programming in BASIC?
QB64 is pretty popular as a sort of QBASIC-dialect with additional features like OpenGL, multimedia support, etc.
FreeBasic is decent as well but its focus is more on being a compiler whereas QB64 aims to be more batteries-included with its builtin IDE.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49942103
Whilst the 'Phoenix Edition' above states that the old QB64 pages are off-line, in fact there do still seem to be some around today. I don't know what the history is here. Whatever it is, it seems to have been fixed.
* https://github.com/DualBrain/QB64
QB64 in turn points to PC-BASIC, a clone of the old GW-BASIC with at a quick glance nothing really modern going on:
Other than a few functions written in Excel’s BASIC, I haven’t written a line of BASIC in over 40 years, so I can’t really speak to the relative strengths of the various compilers and interpreters that are available.
Anywhere Software has several Basic variants, for different platforms:
* Android: B4A (free)
* Java (i.e. multi-platform): B4J (free)
* Arduino: B4R (free)
* iOS: B4I (paid)
They include the bytecode compiler, IDE, and a vibrant community (Erel, the developer, often answers questions and is very responsive fixing bugs and adding features).