@ThinkpadIL: You may be right about BASIC in that regard. Google Translate gives "car street ship" when translating from Japanese. I can also make out a UFO, spaceship, laser beam and ringed planet. And a few exclamations. Is the game a kind of space shooter?

May I kindly remind everyone to keep in mind that the primary topic of this thread is intended to be about programming with old BASIC dialects, mostly for fun and possibly for serious use. It is perfectly fine to mention the merits and demerits of any programming language discussed as long as what people do or have done with any given language remains the focus.

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2023-09-08, 12:53:

@ThinkpadIL: You may be right about BASIC in that regard. Google Translate gives "car street ship" when translating from Japanese. I can also make out a UFO, spaceship, laser beam and ringed planet. And a few exclamations. Is the game a kind of space shooter?

This game is only an example and I didn't try it yet so I have no idea how does it look like in action. You may try it here for example: https://pockemul.com/OL/pockemul.html

@ThinkpadL: Which calculator model should be selected?

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2023-09-08, 14:17:

@ThinkpadL: Which calculator model should be selected?

Are you a robot, or a software based equivalent ?

But okay, The demoscene started as an offshoot, to the software piracy scene. Where instead of saying hi to people in other software piracy groups(in their crack intros/cracktros), then they instead began programming demos as to show their prowess and strength and talent in their graphical demos, and yes demos is short for demonstrations(plural). And to see what extend they could make machine show what it could do. And of course some time there were still greetings and middle fingers to some piracy groups, and also other demo groups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene

And here is another for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC

And here is a great video about the music that some demos used.

Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBkg-iPrbw

For the purpose of this thread it is perhaps best not to go in depth too much about specific things. Screenshots or short descriptions are probably a better way to explain what a game, utility or group is about than a link to an entire website. It is probably best for everyone (myself included) to avoid going into great detail or trying to execute a program in an emulator.

@WolverineDK: Thank you for the links! 😀
@ThinkpadIL: Thank you for trying to show me that game. 😀

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-08, 15:05:

Peter Swinkels wrote on 2023-09-08, 14:17:

@ThinkpadL: Which calculator model should be selected?

Are you a robot, or a software based equivalent ?

There are great chances that he is both, but at least he is a polite one. 😄

I'm somewhat interested in Pascal. If I needed a retro programming langauge I would probably download Turbo Pascal and put on some ugly glasses and feel like a hacker. (After which I would probably start googling for retro implementations of Python because I'm only a wannabe.)

^The packet radio programs TOP (The Other Packet) and STOP (Super TOP) were written in Turbo Pascal 6/7, I remember.
And a messy ham radio shack usually looks a bit like a hacker's room.. ;)

@ThinkpadIL: 😁
@Joakim: Do you like feeling like a "wannabe hacker"?
@Jo22: 😁

Even though I've been a software engineer for more than 20 years now, I no longer feel any passion for it as I find modern software development extremely boring and uninteresting since everything became a web/mobile app. Millions of pointless development projects related to things I don't really care about like social media, big data, ads, crypto, etc. Sure, there is probably some interesting stuff out there but it's too late in the game for me to become part of some cool niche project that is all about actual technology and not some nebulous bullshit that some executive is pushing in order to please clueless investors.

Never turn your hobby into your work they said...

Anyway, from time to time I tinker around with DOS programming since it was the era in which I started learning about it and I've always found programming so close to the hardware absolutely fascinating. Sure, stuff like segmented x86 programming can be convoluted but I find that in general getting little DOS programs up and running is strangely therapeutic.

I usually favor Borland's Turbo suite since it has really good documentation and it's not as bloated as Microsoft's tools. I learned to program using Turbo Pascal back in the day, but plain old K&R-style ANSI C is my all-time favorite language. It's so clear and devoid of bullshit that it feels like a breath of fresh air compared to what I do every day at work with <insert absurd javascript framework of the week here>. I also love some occasional x86 assembly using TASM.

For a while I've been trying to get into VB 1.0 for DOS since it seems very nice for building text-based UIs, but the almost complete lack of documentation kind of prevents me to dig deeper into it. There are some books available on the Internet Archive, but I don't like having to deal with that "loan" system for something that is so utterly obsolete now. I just want a PDF.

Joakim wrote on 2023-09-08, 18:09:

I'm somewhat interested in Pascal. If I needed a retro programming langauge I would probably download Turbo Pascal and put on some ugly glasses and feel like a hacker. (After which I would probably start googling for retro implementations of Python because I'm only a wannabe.)

PythonD 32bit Python for DOS and Windows

https://www.caddit.net/pythond/

And here is a link for Python for quite a few systems.

https://legacy.python.org/download/other/

^Cool, thanks, I didn't know that either! 😃

TheMobRules wrote on 2023-09-08, 21:37:

I learned to program using Turbo Pascal back in the day, but plain old K&R-style ANSI C is my all-time favorite language.

+1

I recommend giving MIX Power C a chance, then. 🙂
It's not the most popular or current, but it's a cute little compiler/linker. And does K&R just fine, even handles all the akward sources of an ancient BASIC transpiler.
It also has switches for 80186, 80286 and x87..

Edit: Power C can be seen in an old video of mine : https://youtu.be/KE648YNe2Ag?t=692

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-09, 04:38:

PythonD 32bit Python for DOS and Windows […]
Show full quote

Joakim wrote on 2023-09-08, 18:09:

I'm somewhat interested in Pascal. If I needed a retro programming langauge I would probably download Turbo Pascal and put on some ugly glasses and feel like a hacker. (After which I would probably start googling for retro implementations of Python because I'm only a wannabe.)

PythonD 32bit Python for DOS and Windows

https://www.caddit.net/pythond/

And here is a link for Python for quite a few systems.

https://legacy.python.org/download/other/

That's pretty cool! Thanks for sharing.

Joakim wrote on 2023-09-09, 05:39:

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-09, 04:38:

PythonD 32bit Python for DOS and Windows […]
Show full quote

Joakim wrote on 2023-09-08, 18:09:

I'm somewhat interested in Pascal. If I needed a retro programming langauge I would probably download Turbo Pascal and put on some ugly glasses and feel like a hacker. (After which I would probably start googling for retro implementations of Python because I'm only a wannabe.)

PythonD 32bit Python for DOS and Windows

https://www.caddit.net/pythond/

And here is a link for Python for quite a few systems.

https://legacy.python.org/download/other/

That's pretty cool! Thanks for sharing.

You are welcome mate, I always try to share the good and positive vibe, heck even sharing the love with a good link like that 😀

@TheMobRules:
So modern software development bores you? And indeed something you do for fun shouldn't become work! 😉 Nice to see someone else mention MS-DOS programming (No disrespect to the people who brought up other platforms, but I'm mostly an MS-DOS programmer myself. I am sorry I wasn't more clear about this from the start.) Do you have examples of your DOS programs for me to look at?
(Again, my apologies to everybody else who shared their stories, other platforms take much more time for me to figure out than MS-DOS, sorry about that!)

You very wall may be interested in this extensive javascript SDK for DOS:

https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOjS
https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOjSHPackages

Gotta have a Pentium at least. 😁

@xcomcmdr: Thank you, yes that looks interesting and pretty impressive!

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

Does anyone here still use any of the following programming languages: […]
Show full quote

Does anyone here still use any of the following programming languages:

1. GwBasic
2. Q(uick Basic)
3. Visual Basic for MS-DOS
4. Visual Basic 2.0-4.0 for Windows 3.x
5. Visual Basic 5.0-6.0
6. Other old programming languages for other platforms.

?

Yes! Perhaps not so regularly now though

and also others now and then:

BASM - basic to assembly tool, the resultant code can be edited and then needs to be assembled and linked old school style 😀
MASM - Microsoft assembler
TASM - Borland 'turbo' assembler

in addition to QBASIC also Quick Basic 4.5 and Quick Basic Professional Development System 7.1, also used a dos tools called "power basic" once and have tried at various times other basics like RapidQ, GFA basic, Basic4GL, Blitz Basic & BlitzMax (which still exists as open source!) and others. For 'modern' basics i use what's left of VB6 in office VBA occasionally and also VB.NET sparingly plus of course Freebasic

Microsoft C
Turbo C and later Borland tools like Builder
Pacific C
and various others less frequently plus modern implementations gcc and c\c++ as implemented in visual studio

Turbo Pascal and later Borland tools up to Delphi 7 and of course lazarus and freepascal as modern tools

for later / modern things i have done things in java, javascript, c#.net, python and a few others

it's almost all dabbling and trying things out though i did make a few full applications (mostly command line utilities and some games)

i enjoyed the scene back then, especially all the DOS stuff around graphics, the text file guides and their authors (like Denthor and others), the forums and so on

.
this makes me want to hobby program again, its been years - when i look online for hobby game dev videos now i just see people dropping things into visual components and after some clicks and some seemingly unconnected lines there's a car driving around a full landscape... looks great but the tools themselves seem to have high upfront learning costs and its quite a jump from the older 'all text' appraoch

gerry wrote on 2023-09-20, 12:12:

[..] in addition to QBASIC also Quick Basic 4.5 and Quick Basic Professional Development System 7.1, also used a dos tools called "power basic" once
and have tried at various times other basics like RapidQ, GFA basic, Basic4GL, Blitz Basic & BlitzMax (which still exists as open source!) and others.
For 'modern' basics i use what's left of VB6 in office VBA occasionally and also VB.NET sparingly plus of course Freebasic [..]

Power Basic is cool, it was based on Turbo Basic I heard. And vice versa.

There's also Locomotive Basic 2 on GEM.. It shipped with the floppies of my dad's PC 1512 many moons ago.
Sadly, it's only an interpreter - but with a pretty IDE. Too bad it never evolved into a full-fledged QB alternative.

On Amiga, there also was Amiga Basic.. Better than C64 Basic for sure! 😁

Hm. And then there's a little Basic compiler from Japan, Tokiwa Basic Compiler or TBC, for short.
Last version was 5.5, I think. Runs on DOS command line.

SNOBOL

I've actually never used it. It's primarily for text processing. I reckon very little S* code was used in ChatGPT. I have a S* compiler/interpreter for the TI Pro somewhere. I also picked up some S* literature recently.