9 Sep
2014
9 Sep
'14
1:32 a.m.
On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 6:08 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
On Tue, 9 Sep 2014, Dave G4UGM wrote:
VBDOS and MS BASIC Professional Development System could both compile
the majority of QuickBASIC and QBasic source code, while those in turn could
compile the majority of GW-BASIC/BASICA source code. Some semantics were
different (for instance, CHAIN obviously couldn't work the same way in
a compiled
environment as an interpreted one), but the legacy of old MS BASIC pretty much
carried forward.
I'd argue that even the VBWin versions up to 6.0 had a very familiar
feel. I started
programming in BASICA on a 5150 running PC-DOS 3.21, and the changes from
one generation to the next felt more evolutionary than revolutionary.
The only BASIC
derivative I use now is FreeBASIC (since it runs on Linux), and that
very little, but
the legacy is well-preserved even today, IMHO.
jpw
Its almost as much deciding which Basics are
really Basics as it is deciding
which computers are Mainframes, Mid-Range or MiniComputers....
I also guess its ironic that Microsoft kind of started with Basic ....
And whilst the latest VB.Net isn't any more basic that C++ is C what about
Visual Basic for DOS was that "Basic". Going back further was QuickBasic a
Basic?
P.S. if you do have an MS Windows or Linux PC and yearn for that retro
feeling you can always run GWBASIC in DosBox.....