QBASIC Programming for Kids

[Geek-9pm]

QBASIC Programming for Kids
by Ted Felix
http://www.tedfelix.com/qbasic/
I came across the site and would like to share it with others.
Here is a bit of his book:

You've probably used computers to play games, and to write reports for school. It's a lot more fun to create your own games to play on the computer. This book will help you get started by using QBASIC. QBASIC is a programming language. With a programming language you can tell the computer what you want it to do. It's a lot like giving someone directions to your house. The computer follows each step and does exactly what you tell it. By programming the computer you can solve math problems, create art or music, and even make new games. It's all up to you.
...
When I was a kid, all we had was the "old BASIC". It had line numbers and didn't teach good structured programming habits. QBASIC is a much better learning tool. With the information acquired from this book, one can move on to a more advanced QBASIC book (if you can find one). After becoming proficient in QBASIC, one can move on to more powerful languages like Visual Basic, Java, C, and eventually C++. I would suggest a course of study like this:..

To find out more, go to the link above. Excellent tutorial.

BTW, you should have no problem using QBASIC in the DOS compatibility mode.

[Dias de verano]

BTW, you should have no problem using QBASIC in the DOS compatibility mode.

Except very high cpu usage in XP (don't know about Vista) starting the moment the IDE is opened.

[gh0std0g74]

QBasic is dated. there are languages better than QBasic that even kids can use.

[BC_Programmer]

QBasic is dated. there are languages better than QBasic that even kids can use.

Quite true- It wouldn't feel right teaching somebody to create 16-bit programs these days. freeBASIC at the very least.

[Bones92]

My first programming language was QBASIC, on an old 486. Brilliant fun. I was about 7 at the time... I just could never get ON KEY to work...

[Ralph Spencer]

I go with ppl who say there're better languages than qbasic. Go for Visual Basic or st like that, I'd say.

[d-boy22]

one of my friends had to take QBASIC in college

[macdad-]

one of my friends had to take QBASIC in college

When?

[d-boy22]

they are just finishing the class up real soon. 

[macdad-]

they are just finishing the class up real soon. 

 , thought they would be doing more recent languages, Computer Sci i'm guessing?

[Ironman]

They still use TrueBasic in the math courses at our local High School.

[Geek-9pm]

Shocked, thought they would be doing more recent languages, Computer Sci i'm guessing?

Like what?
The man who developed Pascal as a teaching language spent a lot of time on it. And the academic community has also done a lot with it. It can be used fro teaching and it can be used for heavy duty work.

Somehow, Pascal it just did not take over the world. It requires structure and order in thinking out a problem. Which, of course, is not what current society appreciates. Nowadays everybody wants something that just does magic, no thought involved.

QBASIC comes close to working magic.

[BC_Programmer]

Pascal is a great teaching tool, but practically useless for anything more then trivial programs. The limitations, such as having only 255 characters in a string and several others meant that people quickly migrated from pascal to other languages, like C or C++.

By the time pascal fixed these problems, it was too late. But Delphi is good, haven't used it much myself, though.

[Geek-9pm]

The limitations, such as having only 255 characters in a string and several others meant that people quickly migrated from pascal

I think Pascal cam too late. And it was mostly a Borland product. Microsoft made a Pascal that was very much like QBASIC for the visual shell. 
But Q BASIC was already out there and you did not have to buy anything more to just test it out. And about the string thing. QBASIC would later do up to 32,700 chars in a string. And the stings were not wimpy null terminated. Instead they were dynamically managed. And QBASIC could run circles around C in string handling. Real programmers do not use null terminated strings. BLAH!

The magic of QBASIC is that you did not have to declare anything, except in real tough applications. Just $ to identify a string and everything else was a floating point number. Great for Kids and anybody starting out. Even simple arrays were automatic.

Pascal, as I mentioned, require smore order and structure.
QBASIC was more easy.

[macdad-]

VB.NET is good, yet for nostalgia's sake(and for BC not trying to throw me into captivity  ), VB6 is still great

[Geek-9pm]

Some of use do not like the .NET method because it requires so much additional changes to be made to the system. The older BASIC compilers had a single run time library that did not have to be pushed into the system.

For the QB 4.5 compiler for QBASIC and Visual Basic for DOS, look here:

http://www.qbcafe.net/qbc/english/download/compiler/qbasic_compiler.shtml

[gh0std0g74]

The magic of QBASIC is that you did not have to declare anything, except in real tough applications. Just $ to identify a string and everything else was a floating point number. Great for Kids and anybody starting out. Even simple arrays were automatic.

many other modern programming languages, eg Python have better data structures such as dictionaries and far much better than QBasic in terms of libraries / modules, string parsing engines, etc... and definitely suited for kids as well...

[macdad-]

Some of use do not like the .NET method because it requires so much additional changes to be made to the system. The older BASIC compilers had a single run time library that did not have to be pushed into the system.

For the QB 4.5 compiler for QBASIC and Visual Basic for DOS, look here:

http://www.qbcafe.net/qbc/english/download/compiler/qbasic_compiler.shtml

True and you have to install the NET framework on the computer to run .NET apps.

To bad they can't let you just build it into a stand-alone(no framework) EXE.