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Help attempt to make Qbasic Freeware
 
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Happy
JonA's American snack pack


Joined: 03 Aug 2002
Posts: 200

PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 2:37 am    Post subject: [quote]

I am Har har har wrote:
How do owning guns have anything to do with QB?

Honestly, I agree. QBasic compilers should be freeware. There are plenty of free C compilers and assemblers out there, and QB 1.1 is free anyway. To keep it from us when Gates makes no money from it anyway is just wrong. We should do something aboot this.


BadMrBox wrote:
Hell. Happy's annoying script gave me a headache and its really not that serious. Thoose two statements and Happy goes hand-in-hand all to often... but I think he got the idea. Freeware QB!!!


Mocking people through cynicism and obscurity is totally wasted on you two.

That being said, I'd like to state that I think the petition idea is completely ignorant, and devoid of any real merit.
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Barok
Stephen Hawking


Joined: 26 Nov 2002
Posts: 248
Location: Bushland of Canada

PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 5:21 am    Post subject: [quote]

many people's first programming language will be qbasic. many people's first programming language will be qbasic. it's easy to learn, and is generally a great start for beginning programmers. (i think.) . qbasic is the whole reason why there are several ppl interested in programming at my school now. and how many of you have started programming with some form of basic? as well, someone who may want to learn how to program may find qbasic, but be scared at the fact that it is illegal to download and decide not to program because the simplest programming language is not legal. basically, (pardon the pun) i'm not asking you to sign it for yourselves, i'm asking you to sign it for the ppl yet to learn programming.

this is a pathetic attempt by barok to get you to sign.
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LeoDraco
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Joined: 24 Jun 2003
Posts: 584
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:26 am    Post subject: [quote]

Barok wrote:
many people's first programming language will be qbasic. many people's first programming language will be qbasic. it's easy to learn, and is generally a great start for beginning programmers. (i think.) . qbasic is the whole reason why there are several ppl interested in programming at my school now. and how many of you have started programming with some form of basic? as well, someone who may want to learn how to program may find qbasic, but be scared at the fact that it is illegal to download and decide not to program because the simplest programming language is not legal. basically, (pardon the pun) i'm not asking you to sign it for yourselves, i'm asking you to sign it for the ppl yet to learn programming.

this is a pathetic attempt by barok to get you to sign.


Yeah, but see, BASIC ruins people, just like Pascal did (well, does, heh; I have a friend who absolutely cannot think object-orientedly, and that would be entirely due to his years hacking in Pascal). It takes a lot of work to break bad habits that were learned from BASIC; those of us who went on to become better coders did so because of a lot of hard work to forget what we thought was coding, in the BASIC sense. BASIC is an ugly, nasty, horrible little language, and the QBASIC interpreter/QB compiler were ugly, nasty, horrible implementations of the language. BASIC isn't even the most simplistic language that there is; one could argue that LISP/Scheme is even more simplistic.

C, C++, Python, ML, hell, even Prolog are simple languages to learn; sure, you wouldn't necessarily be idiomatically strong with them right from the get-go, but they are all more elegant languages than any BASIC variant that you'll find out there.
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Sirocco
Mage


Joined: 01 Jun 2002
Posts: 345

PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 2:07 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Yeah, I have a bad habit of quoting snippets out of context to provide reference points for my statements. Basically I was expanding on your quote to address the OP.

.
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Mandrake
elementry school minded asshole


Joined: 28 May 2002
Posts: 1341
Location: GNARR!

PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 3:00 pm    Post subject: [quote]

your arguements are silly- most people i know learned Java as their first coding language- or PHP. and programming in QB isn't illegal, but dloading a version of QB that you didn't pay for is. It would be like petitioning ASCII to give copies of RM2K out for free becuase the people using it 'think it's the right thing to do'.

Bah! Why no just use XBasic, power basic or liberty basic? Both are dialects of basic that are free or inexpensive, and have binaries that can run on many more machines than just those with a Dos emulator that actually works.
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janus
Mage


Joined: 29 Jun 2002
Posts: 464
Location: Issaquah, WA

PostPosted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 12:15 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Mandrake wrote:
Bah! Why no just use XBasic, power basic or liberty basic? Both are dialects of basic that are free or inexpensive, and have binaries that can run on many more machines than just those with a Dos emulator that actually works.
You know that PowerBasic costs like two hundred bucks, right?

Liberty basic is really cheap though. Pretty neat little app.
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BadMrBox
Bringer of Apocalypse


Joined: 26 Jun 2002
Posts: 1022
Location: Dark Forest's of Sweden

PostPosted: Sat Mar 06, 2004 2:37 pm    Post subject: [quote]

BadMrBox's Brainwashing Tour tm
Argh. Dont argue. Just sign the damn paper. I mean argh, sign!!!
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster


Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 7:52 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Well there is zip of the QBasic source code out there. It's all in ASM, so I sure as hell wouldn't mess with it. Only God and Microsoft know why a compiler written in ASM runs like crap on a 2Ghz computer. :P

QBasic is the slowest programming environment I've ever seen. It makes me shirk whenever I consider writing a new system. I'm paranoid over performance issues. Terrible questions plague me: "How vital will this choice of loop blocks be to the acceptable performance of my string sorter? Should I use ASM to get better vertical syncronization with my graphics update kernal? The OUT statement doesn't seem to be checking the bits in time...." QB45 is not a big improvement.

C could produce code that very effectively shot lines across virtual dungeons and scaled bitmaps in proprotion to their lengths, on a 286 no less. Even with CALL ABSOLUTE machine codes, just try that with QB. I dare you.

What may interest many here, is the evolution of MS's corporate strategy. Gates and Co. lie awake at night courtesy of Linus Torvalds and Sourceforge. They are ready to cost themselves millions--perhaps even billions--trying to flood the market with their software before the opensource giant wakes from its slumber in the next few years. Opensource is organizing... and organizing... and organizing still more. All of the world's greatest minds are getting involved, and corporate software production is in trouble. That's why we're getting betas of the entire Visual Studio product line for free, so we'll like MS enough not to pass on their Longhorn technology in 2007 or whenever they actually release it. (assuming they get to) Visual Basic NET is included in the deal, of course. The Halloween documents discuss the Microsoft Way in detail.

If you could get something TO Gates somehow, then he might have an idea for a new product or something, or a new marketing dynamo, something. I've got a feeling he's one of the reasons that QB1.1 has a spot on my WinXP CD. Even so, MS has a policy about legacy software. They think it is socially backward and they discourage its utility when they can.

Gates senses his company is in dire straights, but maybe it doesn't matter. ...Why not make a QB IDE for the VB NET console compiler?
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DeveloperX
202192397


Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA

PostPosted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 3:48 am    Post subject: [quote]

I signed it. I believe that all of those old DOS environment tools should be free!
Hell, Borland made their compiler free, m$ should do so!
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Rainer Deyke
Demon Hunter


Joined: 05 Jun 2002
Posts: 672

PostPosted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 6:34 am    Post subject: [quote]

Microsoft did make their compiler free. http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/.
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Nodtveidt
Demon Hunter


Joined: 11 Nov 2002
Posts: 786
Location: Camuy, PR

PostPosted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 12:37 pm    Post subject: [quote]

VS.NET is also technically free...the .net compilers come free with the .net framework. :) (at least the C# one does...I think the others do too but don't quote me on it coz I ain't quite sure...not like I care either coz I can't stand C# or that completely screwed up new version of VB...but anyways...gimme MinGW anyday...)
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