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When was the last time you used GWBASIC?

10 COLOR 12, 0, 0
20 CLS
30 PRINT "GW-BASIC IS AWESOME!"
40 GOTO 30

I ran some programs in it a year or so ago, when I found some buried on an ancient hard drive. The last time I *programmed* in it has to be something like 15 years ago.
 
I never used it other than to run that gorilla tossing bananas program. My programming days were spent coding in Fortran 77.
 
Originally posted by: Linflas
I never used it other than to run that gorilla tossing bananas program. My programming days were spent coding in Fortran 77.
Click to expand...

That was in QBasic, AFAIK there wasn't a GW-BASIC version.
 
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
Did you ever program with it?
Click to expand...
I did a lot of things with it when I was young. I wanted to be a game programmer, so I made some games in GW-Basic. But, I didn't have good artistic skills. So, I had to program a MS-Paint like code (long before Paint was available). But, then I made some life-like images pixel by pixel and realised that I had no disk space. So, I programmed an image compression code far before PKZIP was available to me and long before I ever heard of compression algorythms or saw any books on the topic. Ultimately I realized that I never finished projects and instead enjoyed the first 50%. So nothing I wrote ever was finished. That was almost 15-20 years ago, nice memories that I had.

Then I started using it for college work. I did some of my homework with it, and even used it as an independent course to help out the chemical engineering undergraduate lab (improving code to run a distillation column). Although, by then, Q-Basic and Quick-Basic were around and I gradually transitioned to them to finish out my undergrad work.

I now use Visual Basic 6.0. Occasionally I use VB.NET 2008, but I just can't get the hang of it. For example, in VB.NET you can't just print something to the screen (VB 6.0 was the last version to have a print command). Bah! Instead, you need a multiple page list of code to ask the video card to possibly print something that won't stay there if another window covers it up and you need more pages of code to handle that situation. I need to start taking courses on programming instead of self-teaching.
 
Originally posted by: dullard
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
Did you ever program with it?
Click to expand...
I did a lot of things with it when I was young. I wanted to be a game programmer, so I made some games in GW-Basic. But, I didn't have good artistic skills. So, I had to program a MS-Paint like code (long before Paint was available). But, then I made some life-like images pixel by pixel and realised that I had no disk space. So, I programmed an image compression code far before PKZIP was available to me and long before I ever heard of compression algorythms or saw any books on the topic. Ultimately I realized that I never finished projects and instead enjoyed the first 50%. So nothing I wrote ever was finished. That was almost 15-20 years ago, nice memories that I had.

Then I started using it for college work. I did some of my homework with it, and even used it as an independent course to help out the chemical engineering undergraduate lab (improving code to run a distillation column). Although, by then, Q-Basic and Quick-Basic were around and I gradually transitioned to them to finish out my undergrad work.
Click to expand...

Yes! Yes! This brings back so many memories. I too programmed a game or two for my VIC20 when I was about 13. I never could get the hang of sprite programming though. And dont even think about mentioning ASSEMBLY to me. I beat my head on the wall all night long trying to teach myself that, but couldnt do it.
 
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
And dont even think about mentioning ASEMMBLY to me. I beat my head on the wall all night long trying to teach myself that, but couldnt do it.
Click to expand...
I got far enough in assembly to write a code which opened my compressed image files and draw them on the screen. But I could never figure out how to store any information in a variable. I couldn't get any more complicated than that and had to give it up.

 
Originally posted by: dullard
I did a lot of things with it when I was young. I wanted to be a game programmer, so I made some games in GW-Basic. But, I didn't have good artistic skills. So, I had to program a MS-Paint like code (long before Paint was available). But, then I made some life-like images pixel by pixel and realised that I had no disk space. So, I programmed an image compression code far before PKZIP was available to me and long before I ever heard of compression algorythms or saw any books on the topic. Ultimately I realized that I never finished projects and instead enjoyed the first 50%. So nothing I wrote ever was finished. That was almost 15-20 years ago, nice memories that I had.
Click to expand...

Funny, I was the same way in high school. Fortunately I had a friend who just wasn't that good at the first 50%, but could always finish it out once I got it there 😛

I now use Visual Basic 6.0. Occasionally I use VB.NET 2008, but I just can't get the hang of it. For example, in VB.NET you can't just print something to the screen (VB 6.0 was the last version to have a print command). Bah! Instead, you need a multiple page list of code to ask the video card to possibly print something that won't stay there if another window covers it up and you need more pages of code to handle that situation. I need to start taking courses on programming instead of self-teaching.
Click to expand...

Console app, I assume?
Regardless, a single line command can append whatever value it is you're looking for to a text file 😉 (System.IO.File.AppendAllText)
 
I have never touched BASIC in any way, shape or form. Started with Java, graduated to c++, now teaching myself Python. It's the only way to fly. 😀
 
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat


Yes! Yes! This brings back so many memories. I too programmed a game or two for my VIC20 when I was about 13. I never could get the hang of sprite programming though. And dont even think about mentioning ASSEMBLY to me. I beat my head on the wall all night long trying to teach myself that, but couldnt do it.
Click to expand...


Sprites were fairly complex back then. You had to store the sprite in memory, copy the area where the sprite was going to be into memory, copy the sprite memory to the buffer to display the sprite, put back the original data you copied to memory, copy the next area the sprite would be at, display sprite, repeat over and over. You didn't have the blitter that came with later hardware making sprites much much easier.

You really needed to use assembly because basic was too slow and it would flicker as it moved.
 
Let me see....

hmmm, that year was a leap year, then there was that sping of 98, then there was a couple of years before that.....


Yep, just as I thought. Never.
 
Originally posted by: Fritzo
Let me see....

hmmm, that year was a leap year, then there was that sping of 98, then there was a couple of years before that.....


Yep, just as I thought. Never.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah? So what language did you use smartypants? 😉
 
Originally posted by: Modelworks
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat


Yes! Yes! This brings back so many memories. I too programmed a game or two for my VIC20 when I was about 13. I never could get the hang of sprite programming though. And dont even think about mentioning ASSEMBLY to me. I beat my head on the wall all night long trying to teach myself that, but couldnt do it.
Click to expand...


Sprites were fairly complex back then. You had to store the sprite in memory, copy the area where the sprite was going to be into memory, copy the sprite memory to the buffer to display the sprite, put back the original data you copied to memory, copy the next area the sprite would be at, display sprite, repeat over and over. You didn't have the blitter that came with later hardware making sprites much much easier.

You really needed to use assembly because basic was too slow and it would flicker as it moved.
Click to expand...

Where were you when I needed you in 1983?
 
I used BASIC versions on my TRS-80 model 1, Atari 800 and C=64 but my first PC languages were Pascal and 8086 assembly. I did do some compiled BASIC (MS Basic PDS) work for my first post-college employer in 1994-96 but haven't touched it since then.
 
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