...so I've actually been pretty sick the past few days. I'm not really ready to get back to working on stuff yet, but I am recovering for sure. I glanced over the comments left and will at least say a few things now so you guys don't think I'm dead or something. ;)
* The reason using POKE and aiming for the text mode screen buffer addresses is faster than PRINT is because it's doing zero formatting and only writing one byte of information, which is either going to adjust the character or both the foreground/background colour. PRINT is still infinitely more convenient. :B
* I'm used to calling literals "constants" because technically they ARE a form of constant as their state cannot change, which is what a constant is. You can start getting really in-depth into this with other languages by now separating out static values, enumerations, even calling the output produced by const and #define by different terms. But yeah, I know what I called "constants" are technically "literals". I'll clarify this better if I ever do another video like this.
* AFAIK, BASICA programs cannot be compiled into executables using period-specific software, but all versions of MS-DOS which came before QBASIC came with BASICA, so it wasn't a big deal. I could be wrong about that.
* I'm not sure if TXT files use both CR+LF or just CR... TBH, I'm more comfortable working with binary files than with text files anyways. :P
* I self-taught myself most of the programming I know, starting with BASIC when I was 10, mostly by reading books and trying out commands. The reasons behind the simple-letters I use are, quite frankly, pretty poor logic:
a = A single character being input, chosen because it's the first letter in the alphabet and I'm likely going to check multiple alphabet characters
c = A single character being checked, chosen because "char" starts with 'c'
f = A temporary floating-point value, chosen because "float" starts with 'f'
j = A random integer, chosen because many words associated with chaos, randomness and luck start with j, such as "joker", "jester", and "jackpot"
s = A temporary string, chosen because "string" starts with 's'
v = A temporary integer value that won't be used for iteration at all, chosen because it's a "value", which starts with 'v'
z = A temporary integer value that will be used for iteration, but not necessarily every time it's used, chosen because it's the last letter on the keyboard and the one I'm least likely to start any other more complex variable name with, given how little work I've done in 3D
cc, ffff, jj, zzz = Examples of what I do when I need more than one at a time
* There are definitely differences between QBASIC and BASICA and virtually all forms of BASIC out there. I mentioned the thing with RND() but there's countless others, such as CALL in BASICA becoming CALL ABSOLUTE in QBASIC, which is what I did indeed mean to say at the end of the video in terms of dangerous commands. :P
* "SYSTEM" was definitely not a shell command... since there was actually a "SHELL" command in QBASIC. The thing is, in an actual BASIC interpreter there's no way to close the thing out and return to the launching environment, thus "SYSTEM" was meant as a command which returned control to the system, whereas END would end execution of the program and return you to the interpreter. There was a STOP command which would suspend execution of the program, reporting the line number in the process and I'm not 100% certain what this was used for outside of debugging.
* Using CHR$ to print everything from 32 to 255, no problem. But remember, 0 through 31 are escape sequences and many of them actually DO something when output to a console, which is what BASIC output is, thus using a single CHR$ you can produce a tab, backspace by a character, produce a bell sound, there's even one which will activate a printer if one's attached!
* I didn't forget about GOSUB, it's just not very useful with tiny programs. :P
* I actually never really learned to use DEF to its full potential, but I did use things like DEFLNG when I needed my programs to have nothing to do with floating point. :P
* Yeah, I forgot about KILL. ;)
Anywhoo, gonna go back to being all kinds of sick now. I'll start replying to eMails and stuff again sometime in the next few days.