4 ms·

The weird thing about QBasic is that it came out in 1991, when Windows was already well established. So even though I started developing in the 90s, I immediate

The weird thing about QBasic is that it came out in 1991, when Windows was already well established. So even though I started developing in the 90s, I immediately used Visual Basic and never even heard of QBasic for at least a decade or so later... maybe more. Lately there's been posts on HN reminiscing about QBasic, which is great, but it seems almost like a niche group of people who in the 90s were still using DOS a lot. (Which, granted, was a lot of people). But I completely missed it - it almost feels to me like it didn't exist and someone retconned history to add it in. Now TRS-80 BASIC? Or Delphi? PowerBuilder? Or - wait for it - LotusScript? Now there's some languages to celebrate! (Joking, of course). I used all of them, the latter ones to make a living at one point or another.

ashleyn 6y ago
> Lately there's been posts on HN reminiscing about QBasic, which is great, but it seems almost like a niche group of people who in the 90s were still using DOS a lot. (Which, granted, was a lot of people). But I completely missed it - it almost feels to me like it didn't exist and someone retconned history to add it in. VB costed money, Qbasic came free with the operating system. There was an active QB scene well into the late 2000s owing to the fact that many poorer families would buy secondhand equipment that had Qbasic on it totally free.
earthboundkid 6y ago
Windows was not “well established” before 3.1, which was released in 1992. Arguably, even after that DOS was still important until Windows 95.
dragonwriter 6y ago
The weird thing about QBasic is that it came out in 1991, when Windows was already well established. Windows wasn't that well established in 1991, and QBasic was a direct replacement for QuickBasic (and VB was the premium-cost replacement for the Professional Development System that was the upmarket companion to QuickBasic), which itself was the successor to GWBasic on PC and there's probably a fair amount of conflation of them in people's memory. > it seems almost like a niche group of people who in the 90s were still using DOS a lot. It wasn't really a niche group that was still using a DOS a lot before about Win95; Win 3.1 was separate add-on on top of DOS, and lots of important software still targeted DOS exclusively or had separate DOS and Windows versions.

ashleyn 6y ago

> Lately there's been posts on HN reminiscing about QBasic, which is great, but it seems almost like a niche group of people who in the 90s were still using DOS a lot. (Which, granted, was a lot of people). But I completely missed it - it almost feels to me like it didn't exist and someone retconned history to add it in. VB costed money, Qbasic came free with the operating system. There was an active QB scene well into the late 2000s owing to the fact that many poorer families would buy secondhand equipment that had Qbasic on it totally free.

earthboundkid 6y ago

Windows was not “well established” before 3.1, which was released in 1992. Arguably, even after that DOS was still important until Windows 95.

dragonwriter 6y ago

The weird thing about QBasic is that it came out in 1991, when Windows was already well established. Windows wasn't that well established in 1991, and QBasic was a direct replacement for QuickBasic (and VB was the premium-cost replacement for the Professional Development System that was the upmarket companion to QuickBasic), which itself was the successor to GWBasic on PC and there's probably a fair amount of conflation of them in people's memory. > it seems almost like a niche group of people who in the 90s were still using DOS a lot. It wasn't really a niche group that was still using a DOS a lot before about Win95; Win 3.1 was separate add-on on top of DOS, and lots of important software still targeted DOS exclusively or had separate DOS and Windows versions.