Words of wisdom

I've always been a big fan of the Forth programming language. It is nothing like BASIC, but here is a page from forth.com with some words of wisdom from Chuck Moore that I figure are just good food for thought no matter what language you prefer.

http://www.forth.com/resources/evolution/evolve_1.html

BASIC and Space Flight!

The same fellow who created an OpenGL flight simulator in Liberty BASIC has taken it a step further by creating a spaceflight simulator with a map editor. Very neat!

Check it out

BASIC, Lasers, and you

Here's an interesting example of the perfect use for BASIC. If you're into laser tag and programming this may be your ticket. It's cool that the makers of this device decided to write the config tool in Liberty BASIC, and that they make the code available so the average Joe can customize it. That's in the spirit of BASIC. Programming for the non-programmer.

http://www.lasertagparts.com/mtmicro.htm

Fractals in a page of code

What's great about BASIC and languages like it is that you don't have a write a lot of code that has nothing to do with what you're trying to create (like Java for example). It should be really easy to throw together a little code and play with graphics. Programming should be fun, not a burden.

Here is a thread that shows how to draw fractals in less than a page of BASIC.

Click to read the thread

Levity and Programming

BASIC is the perfect programming language to a lighthearted programming challenge, and I'm about to prove it to you. What better matchup between BASIC than Paper, Rock, Scissors?

Check it out. It's great to see people programming just for fun.

Programming tools in BASIC

Alyce Watson has updated her CodeAChrome widget, which is a syntax coloring editor specially made for editing BASIC source code. It's small, simple to use, and free! Check out her announcement here.

Earth shaking!

Here's a neat example of BASIC programming which plots earthquake data graphically.  What's cool about this is that it demonstrates graphics, interfacing with VBScript, and getting information off the Internet.  Add to this that it's not a large program.

  Read about it here.

Who says you can't do that in BASIC?

Over at the Liberty BASIC forum on Conforums they've announced a programmer of the month for September.  Chung, a prolific Liberty BASIC programmer has created an OpenGL flight simulator in Liberty BASIC.   Very, very nice!

  Click to read the announcement and make sure to follow the link to Chung's site to see the flight simulator!

Searching for BASIC

When people search for BASIC online using Google or Bing, or whatever, what keywords do they search with? Some of the obvious choices to me are:

• basic
• basic for windows
• qbasic
• visual basic
• vb

How would you search for BASIC?

Joy in Programming

I responded to a post on another blog (http://blogten.blogspot.com/2009/05/wards-comment.html) about how someone complained that the Smalltalk programming language permits the programmer too much freedom and that it's "too easy." The argument against being easy is that if it's too easy the programmer will be able to rush into creating software that is designed poorly. I have a hard time believing it is ever a benefit that something is hard to do. I think this applies to languages like BASIC so I'm copying what I posted there below.

Freedom is essential if you want to live life to the full, and not just in software development. We need to teach what is the best way to live in freedom, not impose a tyranny of suffocating "safety". If we don't build a culture of discipline and excellence then we deserve what we get. If we impose tons of rules to in an effort to prevent people from making mistakes we risk making software development such a burden that few people will want to do it anymore. It should be possible for software development to be an enjoyable activity, and for innovation and discovery to be experienced by newbies and experts. Joy is important in life.

Perhaps I oversimplify, but I hope this communicates an important idea effectively.

Easter Eggs?

Here's a link to a fun article about how Microsoft added Easter Eggs to their original BASIC implementations.

  http://www.osnews.comments/20361

It never even occurred to me to do this.  ;-)