If you use a vintage computer of pre-CP/M / DOS era, you have no other choice but to use some version of BASIC. 🙂

Fair enough. 😉

The language I most time use today is batch script, inside autoexec.bat

Forth.
Really old, but compact and fits really well when put into synthesizable hardware.

Rexx and DOS batch script tricks.

Oh my, of those I only know batch script. 😀

I view programming as an investment in my future, so I think about what I'll get out of learning a new language. Personally, I don't think the time vs reward for learning Basic is worth it for me. I could see myself learning C# because I could use it with Unity. Similarly, I have been learning Processing because I am interested in creative programming. Given the time investment, I can't see myself tacking on an old language, as I don't think the payoff would be worth it for me. Sure, I could make some simple Basic games, but I'd rather learn something modern for that. If I ever make a game, I'd like it to be able to share it with a bigger audience. I think I'd be better to go with C# or another modern language for that.

Another issue is the programming environment. I need some of the modern conveniences. I did a bit of Basic programming as a kid, but I've been spoiled by modern text editors and IDEs. I couldn't go back to programming in Qbasic like I did as a kid. There are probably some modern options that would work with older languages and that would be a requirement for me to tackle an older language.

That being said, I picked up a book on chaos theory and stuff like fractals a few years ago. It's from the 90s and came with a floppy disk. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to copy the disk contents to a computer, as the floppy has degraded over time. I haven't been able to find a copy of them on the Internet either. If I ever find a good copy, I'd like to tackle some of these programs because I'm interested in computer art and would find it to be worth my time. I think the language they used was C, so I'd be programming in an older version of it.

As an aside, how many of you remember those old programming books where you would type in the code yourself? I used to take these out from the library when I was in elementary school. I had no idea what the games would be like, but the book covert art always looked cool. At that time I had no idea that there were different versions of Basic or even that I would need a version that was meant for a DOS PC instead of something like a C64. I spent hours typing in these programs, but never did get one to work. I think that I was probably using a book with the wrong version of Basic. However, even one typo could also break your program. Either way, I never got to play anything after all that work.

@enign nemo: while it is perfectly fine you are learning a new programming language that is not relevant to this topic... However if you want to talk about old programming languages some more, that is this very thread's topic! 😀

And yes, I remember books with code snippets I had to type in myself, I don't know about the rest? And yes, old computers and software can be rather hard to deal with if you have no real experience with them.

Note:
I am going to briefly allow myself to go off-topic and mention that switching to newer software can be hard too when you're used to the older stuff.

Having said that, please remember I intended this thread to be about using older programming languages, okay?

Sorry. I didn't really pay attention to the title. I read the first part as more of a question asking if we use older languages. Thought it was meant to be more of an open discussion.

@enign nemo: That's no problem and I didn't really mind you going off-topic, however I am trying to keep this thread on track. 😀

Back on topic:
So you never got those programs you had to type in yourself to work? That's a real shame. However, to be honest I almost never got them to work myself. Also coercing a program I had found on some floppy into working was an art form in and of itself. I remember trying to get Turbo BASIC stuff to work in QBasic. Most of the times it didn't work out, or only barely.

That was a long time ago, but I don't think any of them ever worked. It wouldn't surprised me if the book was for Commodore basic or something like that. I would have been 10 or 11 at the time, and I was trying to learn it all myself. A guy at my dad's work gave me a Basic manual and a got a few things to work. I made a sort of screensaver that just printed random lines to the screen. Nothing special, but alright for a kid. I really enjoyed playing around with the PC speaker. Interestingly, I figured out how they made computer noises for old sci-fi shows. It's essentially random notes played at a fairly fast tempo.

That's pretty cool, I did similar stuff as a kid, I made all kinds stuff. Most of it didn't really work that well... 🤣

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2023-09-06, 09:21:

So in short, does anyone here still use these for a hobby or even practical reasons?

I believe a lot of telescope control stuff for Windows (eg, EQMOD) is built with Visual Basic 6 just because there are a bunch of standards based on COM and its easier to build COM stuff in VB than in C++

But today unless you're targeting vintage DOS/windows I don't know there is any practical reason to build new stuff in these old languages. Today Python is a better "beginner" language than BASIC while also being a serious language suitable for building real software in.

I don't know if it counts for the purpose of this thread, but I do still use ancient versions of Visual C++ though again just to allow supporting old versions of Windows while still being able to properly support modern Windows. Plus deploying software written in C/C++ is much easier than in Visual Basic as you don't have to worry about correctly registering COM objects.

On Windows 3.x, it's Visual Basic 1.0, Profan, CA dBase Fast and/or XBase, Visual FoxPro, Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.x, Delphi 1.0, MS Quick C 1.0, MS Visual C++ 1.x..

On Windows 2.x, there's dBFast/Windows (Bumblebee Software) and some other stuff.

Edit: C64 Basic (Basic v2) was among the worst Basic versions of all time.
By contrast C128 Basic (Basic v7) or PET basic were way more feature complete.
Even old GW-BASIC was miles ahead of C64 Basic.
That's why Simon Basic on C64 was such a great phenomenon at the time.
It made Basic v2 much more useful.

I haven't used any of those old basics or VBs for decades, same for Turbo Pascal. I still put them on my retro systems along with some old C compiler and a Prolog interpreter but I seldom program anything at home any more, and when I have I've used Python even on Windows 98.

For what it's worth, in the mid/late 80s I did use gwbasic at work, to do statistical forecasting calculations (time series analysis, kalman filtering, harmonic regression, that sort of thing). Even had an addin tool for Lotus Symphony which would allow me to run that code from within a spreadsheet. Nowadays we have a more controlled work environment, and much heavier duty software, which can do far more but has a steep, wide and long learning curve.

Those old programs fell by the wayside around 1990. Hah, our main software for stats is SAS, which itself has been around since the 1960s (I've used it since the 80s), and we still use bash scripts and Windows batch files on occasion.

ratfink wrote on 2023-09-06, 23:34:

I haven't used any of those old basics or VBs for decades, same for Turbo Pascal. I still put them on my retro systems along with some old C compiler and a Prolog interpreter but I seldom program anything at home any more, and when I have I've used Python even on Windows 98.

That's okay. If you write programs in Visual Badic 1.0 first, then they can be compiled by all subsequent versions. VB DOS, VB 6, VB .NET etc.

VB6 can import old VB projects, whereas Visual Basic 2005 had an automatic VB6 to VB .NET translator utility.
It also was available in other versions, but 2005 was most feature complete here.
VB .NET 2008 was a step backwards, the translator utility was worse than in VB .NET 2005.

davidrg wrote on 2023-09-06, 22:57:

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2023-09-06, 09:21:

So in short, does anyone here still use these for a hobby or even practical reasons?

I believe a lot of telescope control stuff for Windows (eg, EQMOD) is built with Visual Basic 6 just because there are a bunch of standards based on COM and its easier to build COM stuff in VB than in C++

But today unless you're targeting vintage DOS/windows I don't know there is any practical reason to build new stuff in these old languages. Today Python is a better "beginner" language than BASIC while also being a serious language suitable for building real software in.

I believe VB6 technically lives on within VBA

I'm not actually using any, but I have some vague interest in using Pascal and QBasic again one day. I guess the closest thing that I've actually used would be 6502 asm, but that's not exactly a programming language, and it's been years since I last used it.