QBasic

As mentioned in the introduction, QBASIC was the first opportunity I got to start to experiment with what has become my preoccupation: attractive graphical programming. I discovered it first on the hard drive of my 486, and started to program so earnestly that I had soon overran Basic's capabilities, and became frustrated with having the application interpret the code every time I wanted to run it. Nevertheless, I even produced some simple games, which I bundled along with the application, and so quite advanced graphical demonstrations. For those that don't know, BASIC has a very simple, totally unbreakable and idiot-proof language and syntax, but as a result has to interpret each line before it is run: and so as your program runs, the BASIC interpreter is also under way, using up processor speed and memory, and making BASIC programs very slow indeed. Bizaarly, I later discovered that Assembly code can be integrated into BASIC programs, often to disasterous effect, but this may be worth investigating. The editor is a 16-bit DOS program, and is required to run the programs and graphical demos I've bundled into this download. Despite its flaws, BASIC is great for learing the fundamentals of programming, and if it hadn't been for my frustrated days of experimentation I don't think I would ever have been able to produce my current work. The language itself, and a compendulum of several of my more presentable programs I compiled some time ago can be downloaded seperately.

Download QBASIC application (287 Kb, zipped) |
Download demo compendulum (5 Kb, zipped) | Back