@dcromley and @Tim
QB64 started out in 2007. A then young programmer had the neat idea to extend the life of QuickBASIC.At the time, the fiendly folks at MicroThoughts ditched support for the wonderful little 16-bit app. So Rob, aka Galleon Dragon, wanted to make a QB to C translator project to get QB back on 32-bit platforms. Since C/C++ was a stable language and slated for use in the foreseeable future, he knew if he could get QB statements to work as C/C++ statements, he could accomplish his goal. That was an ambitious project, and there was already a start up called FreeBasic in the works, at the time. There were also a handful of other skilled programmers who had similar ambitions and projects. DOSBox comes to mind.
So why didn't everyone just use DOSBox? Well, it was emulated and clumsy. You couldn't run an exe on it, and you had to mount Qbasic in Dos box and run it interpreted. Well how about FreeBasic? Well at the time, the largest QB forum community was the old Network54 QBasic Forum. Several members did migrate from it to FB, which promised to be 100% QB compatible [cough] excuse me. I think folks like me are equipped with built in BS radar devices, but a bunch of QB coders did leave the QBasic Forum and started learning FB. Personally I thought FB was just stringing folks along, until they could get them on their short bus to C, which is more what the language turned out looking like, back then. So along comes Rob to the QBasic Forum to discuss his plans. I had a good feeling about him, but I had to work my ASCII off to get the boss, Mac to make a sub-forum for the project. You see we had a few talented young college students who were trying to make compilers of their own. I don't think they really realized the time they didn't have to complete the task. Rob (Galleon) seemed more realistic. He turned out to be that 1 in a million who made good. Anyway, we started up the sub-forum, and he made some very impressive progress. The first few versions were slow as a snail, but if anyone remembers those initial internet vids, back in the 1990s, well, enough said. Eventually speed and performance picked up, and unlike FB, QB64 was nearly 100% QB compatible; and Rob wanted to keep it that way!
Well in 2008, Mac, The QBasic Forum owner, became terminally ill and passed away. He handed the forum over to me to keep his QBasic Forever" mantra alive. That was all working fine, until a couple of years later. Some nutcase hacked N54 and brought the forum down. Fortunately we were able to get a backup online in a few days, and without much loss. We had great folks at that N54 hosting site. Well during that downtime, Rob up and started his own site, QB64 dot net. (Don't try and go there now, I'll explain later). I was fine with the move, as the project clearly appeared to be the future of QB prgramming. I even became a mod there. As for The QBasic Forum, it kept on chugging along, until Network54 decided to hang up the business a few years back, and sell its boards to Tapatalk. I liked the Tapatalk folks I was working with, so I migrated the forum. It was one of their largest migration projects. They did very well, we only lost a few pages in the process, but now back to the QB64 dot net story. Well it started going down quite often. Growing pains I guess. So three members started up the QB64 dot org site, Bill, Luke, and Fell. Originally they planned to only have the site up when dot net was down, but after that happened about 5 or so times, I was able to convince them to keep it up permanently. They did, and good thing, as a couple months later the dot net site went down for good. Eventually some non-programmer got a hold of it, and put up a handful of pages. Rob looked into it and warned everyone not to go there anymore, as he thought whomever got a hold of it was using it to collect user information when you signed back in to your account. So long story longer, all the posts at QB64 dot net, code, etc, were lost for good.
In January of this year, I guess Fell got over burdened and let someone from Discord (Not really a forum, more of an online chat room) take control of the whole QB64 project. The spiel from this Royal Clown Cola guy was something along the lines of making this nice little hobby language into some bigger than life deal. Remember that BS radar I referenced earlier? Well, it goes off again. So I go back to the .org site and the first thing I see is an "Accept Agreement" page. It's a bit over-controlling, so I close the window instead of accepting the terms. A day later, sure enough, wham, the whole Qb64 dot org forum, including the YouTube channel and Wiki go offline. It's been what, four days now? I'm glad Steve jumped straight in and created this site. We simply have no idea if the .org forum will ever come back, and if any of our work will still be available if it does. I do know, from communicating with Fell, briefly, he's not coming back.
So that's the past history. The present history is to get content up at this site, so search engines can get newbies here to experience the greatest hobby language ever made, and enjoy the support they need to get up and running. The future? Well like Mac said, "QBasic Forever."
Well that was fun, but it took me a lot longer to write this little slice of history than it did to create the accompanying hit single. It went tin on the Billboard Top Ten-Zillion Chart, just today!
https://qb64phoenix.com/forum/showthread...php?tid=40
Pete
QB64 started out in 2007. A then young programmer had the neat idea to extend the life of QuickBASIC.At the time, the fiendly folks at MicroThoughts ditched support for the wonderful little 16-bit app. So Rob, aka Galleon Dragon, wanted to make a QB to C translator project to get QB back on 32-bit platforms. Since C/C++ was a stable language and slated for use in the foreseeable future, he knew if he could get QB statements to work as C/C++ statements, he could accomplish his goal. That was an ambitious project, and there was already a start up called FreeBasic in the works, at the time. There were also a handful of other skilled programmers who had similar ambitions and projects. DOSBox comes to mind.
So why didn't everyone just use DOSBox? Well, it was emulated and clumsy. You couldn't run an exe on it, and you had to mount Qbasic in Dos box and run it interpreted. Well how about FreeBasic? Well at the time, the largest QB forum community was the old Network54 QBasic Forum. Several members did migrate from it to FB, which promised to be 100% QB compatible [cough] excuse me. I think folks like me are equipped with built in BS radar devices, but a bunch of QB coders did leave the QBasic Forum and started learning FB. Personally I thought FB was just stringing folks along, until they could get them on their short bus to C, which is more what the language turned out looking like, back then. So along comes Rob to the QBasic Forum to discuss his plans. I had a good feeling about him, but I had to work my ASCII off to get the boss, Mac to make a sub-forum for the project. You see we had a few talented young college students who were trying to make compilers of their own. I don't think they really realized the time they didn't have to complete the task. Rob (Galleon) seemed more realistic. He turned out to be that 1 in a million who made good. Anyway, we started up the sub-forum, and he made some very impressive progress. The first few versions were slow as a snail, but if anyone remembers those initial internet vids, back in the 1990s, well, enough said. Eventually speed and performance picked up, and unlike FB, QB64 was nearly 100% QB compatible; and Rob wanted to keep it that way!
Well in 2008, Mac, The QBasic Forum owner, became terminally ill and passed away. He handed the forum over to me to keep his QBasic Forever" mantra alive. That was all working fine, until a couple of years later. Some nutcase hacked N54 and brought the forum down. Fortunately we were able to get a backup online in a few days, and without much loss. We had great folks at that N54 hosting site. Well during that downtime, Rob up and started his own site, QB64 dot net. (Don't try and go there now, I'll explain later). I was fine with the move, as the project clearly appeared to be the future of QB prgramming. I even became a mod there. As for The QBasic Forum, it kept on chugging along, until Network54 decided to hang up the business a few years back, and sell its boards to Tapatalk. I liked the Tapatalk folks I was working with, so I migrated the forum. It was one of their largest migration projects. They did very well, we only lost a few pages in the process, but now back to the QB64 dot net story. Well it started going down quite often. Growing pains I guess. So three members started up the QB64 dot org site, Bill, Luke, and Fell. Originally they planned to only have the site up when dot net was down, but after that happened about 5 or so times, I was able to convince them to keep it up permanently. They did, and good thing, as a couple months later the dot net site went down for good. Eventually some non-programmer got a hold of it, and put up a handful of pages. Rob looked into it and warned everyone not to go there anymore, as he thought whomever got a hold of it was using it to collect user information when you signed back in to your account. So long story longer, all the posts at QB64 dot net, code, etc, were lost for good.
In January of this year, I guess Fell got over burdened and let someone from Discord (Not really a forum, more of an online chat room) take control of the whole QB64 project. The spiel from this Royal Clown Cola guy was something along the lines of making this nice little hobby language into some bigger than life deal. Remember that BS radar I referenced earlier? Well, it goes off again. So I go back to the .org site and the first thing I see is an "Accept Agreement" page. It's a bit over-controlling, so I close the window instead of accepting the terms. A day later, sure enough, wham, the whole Qb64 dot org forum, including the YouTube channel and Wiki go offline. It's been what, four days now? I'm glad Steve jumped straight in and created this site. We simply have no idea if the .org forum will ever come back, and if any of our work will still be available if it does. I do know, from communicating with Fell, briefly, he's not coming back.
So that's the past history. The present history is to get content up at this site, so search engines can get newbies here to experience the greatest hobby language ever made, and enjoy the support they need to get up and running. The future? Well like Mac said, "QBasic Forever."
Well that was fun, but it took me a lot longer to write this little slice of history than it did to create the accompanying hit single. It went tin on the Billboard Top Ten-Zillion Chart, just today!
https://qb64phoenix.com/forum/showthread...php?tid=40
Pete