QBASIC -- is it the best for kids to learn programing?

[Brickjectivity]

30 years later, QBasic is still the best | Personal Registry Editor
QBasic - Wikipedia
QB64 Wiki

I donno. Maybe so. If you're not a programmer you may get a new brain function out of playing with it for an hour. I will not vouch for its security and usefulness and cannot help you install it. Just bringing it up, because it is simple, not complicated and not loaded with programmer jargon like 'mutable' 'meta' or 'polymorphism'.

 

[suncowiam]

My first language was basic for the Atari 800. Who knew that would have blossomed to a career?

 

[Onyx]

QBASIC is for wimps.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

30 years later, QBasic is still the best | Personal Registry Editor
QBasic - Wikipedia
QB64 Wiki

I donno. Maybe so. If you're not a programmer you may get a new brain function out of playing with it for an hour. I will not vouch for its security and usefulness and cannot help you install it. Just bringing it up, because it is simple, not complicated and not loaded with programmer jargon like 'mutable' 'meta' or 'polymorphism'.

I did write a 3D chess game with it once! but I'd say Blitz basic would be the best today

I don't think it's any more difficult to get started with, but you can take it pretty much as far as you like..

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

30 years later, QBasic is still the best | Personal Registry Editor
QBasic - Wikipedia
QB64 Wiki

I donno. Maybe so. If you're not a programmer you may get a new brain function out of playing with it for an hour. I will not vouch for its security and usefulness and cannot help you install it. Just bringing it up, because it is simple, not complicated and not loaded with programmer jargon like 'mutable' 'meta' or 'polymorphism'.

It's fine.

(My earliest programming employed PLM and Assembly.)

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

QBASIC is for wimps.
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I remember getting books of programs in BASIC for the TRS-80. I'd spend hours typing in a game (and then hours debugging), and if the program didn't crash when it tried to call some function that my version of BASIC didn't have, I'd get to play some crappy game of boxy blobs moving around the screeen that looked nothing like the artistic rendering of space ships in the book.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

FWIW, with the robotics team I coach (9- to 14-year-olds), we use LEGO Mindstorms for programming. It's a graphical system that's a lot like building a flowchart.

Once they age out of our program, they typically go on to learn Java or C in the high school program (though not from me).

 

[Father Heathen]

I had a QBasic class during high school (late 90's). I would have my assignments completed days in advance just so I could play around with the program and create my own games, such as "Tanks on Ice" which was playable and fun. I actually won an award for that class. Unfortunately, I lost all my 3.5 floppies and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten much of the language.
As for being the best to learn with, I've read/heard on different occasions that QBasic is considered a "sloppy" language that teaches programmers bad habits.

Edit: Another game I made was where you navigated a little stick figure from one side of the screen to the other while dodging other little stick figures (representing zombies) that closed in. You get a point each time you make it to the other side, and would reappear at the first side. Each time the zombies would get slightly faster. This simply repeated until the zombies became unavoidable.

 

[Mindmaster]

30 years later, QBasic is still the best | Personal Registry Editor
QBasic - Wikipedia
QB64 Wiki

I donno. Maybe so. If you're not a programmer you may get a new brain function out of playing with it for an hour. I will not vouch for its security and usefulness and cannot help you install it. Just bringing it up, because it is simple, not complicated and not loaded with programmer jargon like 'mutable' 'meta' or 'polymorphism'.

These days, start Python.

There are a million reasons for that:

1) Real programming language that is used in every area.

2) Tons of libraries pre-rolled to perform nearly any task.

3) It's easy to understand what is going on, and powerful to the point where relatively short programs do a great deal.

4) It's virtually written in English, it behaves as expected.

5) Learning tools are everywhere online. Help is also wildly available.

QBasic is nearly the opposite, at this point.

 

[Brickjectivity]

5) Learning tools are everywhere online. Help is also wildly available.

It would good idea to recommend exactly which of the plethora of learning tools you think are best.

I would recommend three paperback books rather than going through all the piles of online materials:
Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner -- gets you started
Effective Python -- gives you a level of mastery
Python Cookbook -- lots of examples of clean code

 

[Brickjectivity]

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I had a QBasic class during high school (late 90's). I would have my assignments completed days in advance just so I could play around with the program and create my own games, such as "Tanks on Ice" which was playable and fun. I actually won an award for that class. Unfortunately, I lost all my 3.5 floppies and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten much of the language.
As for being the best to learn with, I've read/heard on different occasions that QBasic is considered a "sloppy" language that teaches programmers bad habits.

Edit: Another game I made was where you navigated a little stick figure from one side of the screen to the other while dodging other little stick figures (representing zombies) that closed in. You get a point each time you make it to the other side, and would reappear at the first side. Each time the zombies would get slightly faster. This simply repeated until the zombies became unavoidable.

Yes, some of the simplest games I tried to make were the best,

Also the blocky graphics merely represented tanks and zombies etc- the rest was supplied by your imagination, which is shut down in more photo-realistic games kids play today.

(the zombies now would have given me nightmares!)

kinda as books are to movies..

 

[Father Heathen]

Yes, some of the simplest games I tried to make were the best,

Also the blocky graphics merely represented tanks and zombies etc- the rest was supplied by your imagination, which is shut down in more photo-realistic games kids play today.

(the zombies now would have given me nightmares!)

kinda as books are to movies..

About those blocky graphics. I never got them quite right. Whenever they moved, they would "smear" across the screen. I fixed it by giving the moving objects a black border which would in turn "smear" unnoticed across the black background. Not the proper method but it worked.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

About those blocky graphics. I never got them quite right. Whenever they moved, they would "smear" across the screen. I fixed it by giving the moving objects a black border which would in turn "smear" unnoticed across the black background. Not the proper method but it worked.

ha yes, I had forgotten what a problem that used to be.. I remember using the black border- then having to vary the size for the speed of the object, so it didn't leave specks when it sped up?
and that was before you could look solutions up online-

Finally computers got fast enough for 'double buffering' which is a beautiful thing- I still can't quite believe I can completely redraw an entire page full of high res graphics, then simply flip it with the previous screen .. 60 times a second ?!