i've been using qbasic for a few days now and damn this thing was nice for its time.

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

i've been using qbasic for a few days now and damn this thing was nice for its time. it has breakpoints and step through debugging, and an immediate window where you can input code and run it to do stuff like print out variables

it's... really good? my biggest issue is that the text editor controls are kinda clunky, especially when it comes to indentation

also its bizarre how nice it is to program in a language where i don't have to worry about null dereferences (they're impossible in qbasic)

[pmdj@mstdn.social]

@eniko I started on QBasic/QuickBasic/VBDOS when I was about 9, and yeah, I STILL don't understand all the hate for it. Yeah, it was clunky in some ways, and more complex data structures are difficult-to-impossible to represent. But some of that could have been improved without breaking its spirit.
My oldest kid is just about approaching an age where they could feasibly start messing about with code, and I'm still unsure what to offer up as a modern equivalent.

[vfig@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko it really is! about a year ago i was doing a side project of a small game in qbasic in dosbox (1), using deluxe paint for both sprite graphics (2) and level design sketching (3).

some hard limits to both programs of course, but qbasic's fast iteration (even supporting edit and continue!) was so nice.

and dpaint was also super convenient to use, once i got used to working with its three buffers instead of layers.

[vfig@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko i had originally intended to use lua in love2d or something like that to make the game—but thats always been super awkward for me when it comes to debugging.

in face i dont have *any* development environment in this future year of 2026 for any language that comes even close to the nice workflow of qbasic!

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@pmdj pico 8 is the closest equivalent, but lua is a damn sight more complex than qbasic was