01-17-2026, 01:21 PM
Interesting graphs. But it's not just a QB64 thing. The popularity of Basic variants has unfortunately in general been in decline for many years, although the decline was probably steepest from about 2004 to 2010. You can have a look at https://trends.google.com/trends/ to see that trend.
Since Basic is rarely mentioned in programming discussions and communities (they tend to focus on C, C++, C#, Python, Rust etc.), Basic variants don't get a lot of newcomers. As an example, have a look at the programming subreddits and see how often Basic is mentioned. I get the sense that many current Basic users are the ones who used Basic, when it was more popular (i.e. people born some time between 1945 and 1990), and that group of people is of course not getting any bigger.
It's a shame, because there are some really cool, useful, compiled, multi-platform and very capable Basic variants out there - QB64-PE, FreeBasic, PureBasic, to name a few of my favorites (the latter two being very capable of creating modern GUIs).
What I think could give QB64-PE at least a little boost is:
I definitely have a soft spot for QB64. I think the developers and community are doing a great job and I hope QB64-PE thrives. But since I do most of my stuff in GUIs, I unfortunately don't use QB64-PE as much as I'd like to.
Since Basic is rarely mentioned in programming discussions and communities (they tend to focus on C, C++, C#, Python, Rust etc.), Basic variants don't get a lot of newcomers. As an example, have a look at the programming subreddits and see how often Basic is mentioned. I get the sense that many current Basic users are the ones who used Basic, when it was more popular (i.e. people born some time between 1945 and 1990), and that group of people is of course not getting any bigger.
It's a shame, because there are some really cool, useful, compiled, multi-platform and very capable Basic variants out there - QB64-PE, FreeBasic, PureBasic, to name a few of my favorites (the latter two being very capable of creating modern GUIs).
What I think could give QB64-PE at least a little boost is:
- Mentioning QB64-PE outside of this forum, when there is a natural opportunity to do so (for example in other programming forums)
- Highlighting the strengths of QB64-PE (very intuitive language, multi-platform, actively developed, compiled, (simple) GUIs possible)
- Further developing InForm-PE to support just a few more of the most useful GUI form elements (especially multi-line text editor and maybe a grid view / listicon), maybe even multiple forms/windows, if that is feasible. This would in my view make it a strong option for making various utilities, and a good alternative to AutoIt
- Highlighting (on the main website) the GUI capabilities provided by InForm, since I think that focusing mostly on retro/console scares away many, who want to be able to do at least basic GUIs. The retro appeal probably mainly attracts those, who grew up with console, command-line and QB.
- Maybe (further) developing some "plug and play", multi-platform GUI (or "TUI") libraries so anyone can put something together that is visually appealing with minimal effort
- Clearly communicating that QB64-PE is the only active fork of QB-64. When I was considering QB64, I spent quite a long time trying to figure out what the different QB64 versions and websites were, which sites could be "trusted" and what this whole "RC Cola" thing was about. Most people probably wouldn't bother.
I definitely have a soft spot for QB64. I think the developers and community are doing a great job and I hope QB64-PE thrives. But since I do most of my stuff in GUIs, I unfortunately don't use QB64-PE as much as I'd like to.