News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:30 years later, QBasic is still the best by themodelplumber on Sunday May 27, 2018 @12:50AM (#17165486)
I remember the excitement of being able to finally make my own .exe files with QuickBasic. It was like earning a new merit badge. First .bat, then .exe, then later using PC Magazine's "DOS Power Tools" book I started to write what I recall were .com files using assembly that was entered into some crude edit software that shipped with DOS. I kind of wish I would have gone deeper with that; instead I tried to dive into Linux and spent years trying to get just daily-user comfortable. :-)
Re:30 years later, QBasic is still the best by northwest66 on Sunday May 27, 2018 @02:36AM (#17165784)
When I was about 10 there was nothing I wanted more than to have a program that took minutes to build into an .EXE. In my mind that implied complexity and 'real' programming. Of course, as a professional 30 years later, waiting for compilers is something I could do without.
Re:30 years later, QBasic is still the best by icelancer on Sunday May 27, 2018 @02:48AM (#17165817)
>> instead I tried to dive into Linux and spent years trying to get just daily-user comfortable

Ended up being the right bet though. :)

Did the same thing myself. Struggled for years in Slackware and other builds... had to write my own ADSL driver for broadband to work. Had a dual booting Gateway 2000 PC and always cringed when I selected Linux from the GRUB booter... but it served me very well decades later.

Re:30 years later, QBasic is still the best by john_moscow on Sunday May 27, 2018 @02:21AM (#17165738)
>I started to write what I recall were .com files using assembly that was entered into some crude edit software that shipped with DOS

That must have been debug.com [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debug_(command)