"Well I don't give a damn about my bad reputation."

[Pete]

I hear cock and bull
So put another mime in the DOSBox baby
I hear cock and bull
So won't you QB64 with me

- Not really Joan Jett

[PhilOfPerth]

Sadly a lot of it was brought about by M$. A lot of it was going from BASCOM to QuickBASIC/BASIC PDS to VBDOS to VB for Windows. There are a lot of folks around who remember how it was like to do stuff on an 8-bit computer which help maintain the "bad reputation" in the opinion of others who want it to run fast, who want to be seduced by the eye, who needs to get the latest technology... for bragging or anything else. It's not just BASIC, it's other programming languages. There must have been a lot of resistance to what was added to C in particular, according to the "gcc" manual on chapter 5 or 6 "Extensions to the C language". Defending C code in K&R style could be as ornerous as trying to run BASIC code, which has not much more than "INPUT", "PRINT" and "GOTO", anyhow on 64-bit systems.

BASIC PDS v7.1 had ISAM built in but didn't go anywhere. It was one attempt for in-house support for databases or something else for office. It must have lost favor to Word Basic, something I suddenly discovered reading PC MAGAZINE in the late 1990's...

I program in Lua a few times. A lot of code written for v5.1 and earlier has to be rewritten for the latest v5.4 if it must do heavy processing with integers such as checking out bits or creating WAV files. In the earlier release had to use "bit32" module, but in v5.4 must mess around with:

https://www.lua.org/manual/5.4/manual.ht...ing.unpack

P.S. There is an awful lot of hating on "LET". On Timex Sinclair you had to use "LET", there was no other choice. It was how the computer worked. No I didn't actually have one, I discovered this in a BASIC programming book for children. I didn't like the "joke" offered about it by the previous maintainer of the QB64 wiki... he could have at least offered a link to Wikipedia about the British computer.

@mnrvovrfc I cut my teeth on Sinclair basic, and I reckon it was very impressive (for the time). It was very nostalgic for me to hear this mentioned again. Wow, how things have changed!

[Pete]

I recall the folks at a popular C/C++ forum were nearly useless to me when I was writing a WP in C/C++. All I'd get for answers is "Just use a library for that!" So fork making a custom key input library and other custom goodies. It was possible, but the further away we get from building block languages such as BASIC and ASM, the less knowledgeable the programmers become regarding what's under the hood.

Good assessment list, btw. Thanks for putting that together.

Pete

[TerryRitchie]

I recall the folks at a popular C/C++ forum were nearly useless to me when I was writing a WP in C/C++. All I'd get for answers is "Just use a library for that!" So fork making a custom key input library and other custom goodies. It was possible, but the further away we get from building block languages such as BASIC and ASM, the less knowledgeable the programmers become regarding what's under the hood.

Good assessment list, btw. Thanks for putting that together.

Pete

That's exactly why I used QB64 as a teaching language in my classroom for so long. Even when I was forced to switch to Python I still avoided libraries as much as possible and taught students how to roll their own code.

[Pete]

@TerryRitchie

I get that ASM coders could look at BASIC coders and say we don't know what's going on under the hood, either. Oh, and then what would the few bit flippers in existence have to say about them! Well, I suppose it's all about your point of reference but a language created to be higher level simply obfuscates the process of coding without the use of libraries. To me, that's a lot of valuable coding knowledge lost, and does nothing to stimulate thought. Brain development is memory, but it's also the process of associating and piecing those memories together in a useful way.

I'm bummed they forced Python on your classroom. A similar thing happened to one of my friends, and one of the very few females in the QB community, Solitaire. She had to give up teaching QBasic for .Net. Her philosophy about transitioning was similar to yours. She also tried to impart learning over wrote memory whenever she could.

Anyway, and don't take this the wrong way, I have a very low opinion of teachers these days. In my kid and young adult years, I felt like 10% of a teaching institution was made up of excellent instructors, 80% were average, and 10% were absolute crap. Today, I'd say 2% are excellent, 8% are average, and 90% are absolute crap. That's because the majority won't stand up to the teacher's unions and say no to the damage being done to students with the current curricula and delivery system. With that said, thank you for being a 2%er.

Pete

[mnrvovrfc]

I had the conception forced upon me that teachers should never be questioned. But when I arrived into high school, I noticed it was possible for a teacher to be around only for the paycheck. It caused me left back from a few classes, I had eight straight periods in my senior year...

A few instructors were class. One of them was flat-out a gentleman, even gave his phone number for school work help but I just couldn't understand his lessons and failed his class for the year. I didn't think he made a good instructor though, but it was my fault. A few others could be respected for being well-organized going along with personality. But the others were just bleh and I still have to think about them now and then, wish I could forget about them.

I didn't like my computer science teacher very much while she taught me Turbo Pascal. But she had a cool car at the time, a 1989 or so Honda Accord coupe... Much better was the one I had a few grades before who put me into a Jaguar and drove to a BASIC programming competition I attended. The ceiling inside the car was hugging my head very well the whole journey...

Sorry for going off-topic!

[Kernelpanic]

It was possible, but the further away we get from building block languages such as BASIC and ASM, the less knowledgeable the programmers become regarding what's under the hood.

Pete

Yes, there is some truth to it!