What is the crowd's opinion of FreeBASIC?

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The big problem with languages like C++ , java , for newbies is overhead to get to something you want to do.

So for that reason i'm going to recommend Python, it has a large tool kit in it's standard library so you can do anything you want with it very fast. And it should give you a better feel for how to code and think about solutions to problems (https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/) along with Pycharm community addition as an

IDE(www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/).

Or Freebasic (http://freebasic.net/get) .. The reason i'm recommend this is that language is based heavy on Quickbasic45 syntax. But it's also sort of a hybridized with C/C++ elements as well. So it gives you things like pointer, function pointer , constructors etc. But it's standard library gives you everything you need.

I haven't used any of these, but I have collected a few links as I come across them.

• http://freebasic.net/ - FreeBASIC - Windows, DOS, Linux

• http://www.smallbasic.com/ - Microsoft Small BASIC - Windows

• http://www.freebyte.com/programming/basic/ - lots of links

I coded in QBASIC for a long time. GET is going to place whatever is at those coordinates into the CAR% variable... So changes are car is already being drawn on the screen and then grabbed and stuffed into that CAR% buffer.

Those DRAW commands are kind of like SVG or vector graphics formats. They don't store the raw coordinates most of the time, just a relative path to draw things in. Start here, move right 2 pixels, up two pixels, move left 1 pixel without drawing, then draw something 2 pixels up, then fill...

It's a little esoteric but something you can pick up easily enough.

EDIT: I wouldn't be surprised if you could get this working in FreeBASIC with a little work.

Visual Basic is free. https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs.aspx

FreeBASIC can also be used to create a GUI, thought it's a bit harder. http://freebasic.net/

There are examples for FreeBasic.

FreeBASIC - runs in Windows or Linux. Don't know if it has the editor/debugger since I have only tried it in Linux but if you have a QBASIC or QuickBASIC program you can do

fbc programname.bas -lang qb

and it will compile it to an executable that can be run from a batch file or a Linux shell script (or as a standalone program). The -lang qb specifies that BASIC program is in QBASIC/QuickBASIC format and if you don't use it you'll probably see a bunch of error messages.

Also one person suggested VBscript, sorry to say that is probably not what you want - it really is nothing at all like QBASIC/QuickBASIC, despite Microsoft's hype to the contrary. It may be based on Visual BASIC and share some similarities but it is miles from what you are used to.

The thing I like about FreeBASIC, besides the fact that it's free, is that you can create your program in an easy computer language that you're familiar with, and once you create the executable, most people have no idea you wrote it in BASIC rather than one of those harder languages. So if you cut your teeth on BASIC you can impress people with your coding skills with a lot less effort on your part! ;)