QBasic

Do you remember the very first programming language you ever learn?

For me, that program was known as QBasic. I was 10 when my school first brought in about 10 units of computers for students to learn and play on. That time, everything was stored in a big 3″ floppy disc. I used to have 2 floppy disc with me whenever I go to class, one containing the program and it’s saved files and one containing the game DIGGER. (Evil laughter). Anyway, I still remember during that time, it was all simple simple stuff like how to create shapes and lines, the most complicated one I remembered was to create a house with windows and a door. Then, it was in KDU. I still remember that my classmates and I had to come up with a program to calculate a circuit board various items as one of our assignment in Telecommunication Engineering school. That was not something I’d want to remember cause it was one of the things that took up a lot of my fun time. LOL.

What’s QBasic? QBasic is a beginner’s computer language, it is a variant of the BASIC programming language designed by Microsoft. With QBasic, the user can design computer programs and/or utilities. In the late 80s and early 90s, Microsoft’s DOS came with a version of the BASIC platform known as the GWBasic but later place the standard with QBasic. Starting with Windows 95 though, programming languages became for-sale add-ons. Now there are newer programming languages such as C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, and Java.

QBasic is extremely easy to use. Its math functions are especially good, and it’s a great “learners language” for schools and other simila institutions. It resembles BASIC in its statements, but is more structured -and- flexible at the same time. For instance, line numbers are not required but can be used – as well as “line labels” with text names. The graphics support 256 color 320 x 200 VGA, and 16-color 640×480 VGA, as well as an array of other graphics cards. QBasic can be expanded with the use of QuickLibraries (.QLB’s) which add routines from Assembler and C. It can also be expanded through structured programming – the re-use of SUBroutines and functions. There are many possibilities. Some QLB examples include QBSVGA, a library which gives QB 4.5 SVGA capabilities – up to 1024×768 and 256+ colors, PLUS animation and sprite routines.

In all it’s form and simplicity, the QBasic contains a very durable and versatile platform which could help a user build various simple programs, from a simple snake game to a simple volt calculator. Yup, with the correct coding, you could design a program to do some pretty nifty stuff.

A Sample of a Simple game

This program challenges the user to guess a randomly selected number within the 1-10 range, without offering the usual hints of “higher”/”lower”:

CLS
PRINT "Guess My Number"
INPUT "Would you like to play"; choice$     'An input statement, that takes what the user inputs...
choice$ = UCASE$(choice$)                   ' makes the input completely uppercase (fkld ---> FKLD)

IF choice$ <> "YES" AND choice$ <> "Y" THEN ' and decides whether or not they want to play:
       END

END IF
guesses = 5                                 ' Set up number of guess remaining
RANDOMIZE TIMER                             ' Sets up the random number generator
target = INT(RND * 10) + 1 

WHILE guesses > 0
  INPUT "Guess a number: ", guess           ' Takes user input (the guess)
  IF guess = target THEN                    ' Determines if the guess was correct

    PRINT "You win!"
    END
  ELSE
    guesses = guesses - 1
    PRINT "Sorry, please try again. You have only ";guesses;" times"

  END IF
WEND

PRINT "You ran out of guesses, the number was "; target

END

If you like to give this program a try and join some like minded community, you can join this forum.

You can download the software here if you’d like to give it a try.

Here’s a link to a tutorial by S. Marcus Litchfield

Well, that’s a basic introduction to what QBasic is about and my experience using the program. What was the programming language that you learn when you first started using the computer?

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