4 ms·

I love this so much. I got my start on QBasic and made hundreds of games between 12 and 19 years old. I eventually left it behind, but always had a fond spot in

I love this so much. I got my start on QBasic and made hundreds of games between 12 and 19 years old. I eventually left it behind, but always had a fond spot in my heart for it. Last year, when I was going to rebuild my personal website, someone on Twitter challenged me: “Build it in QBasic, you coward”. I was like “haha…wait, can I?” And I did! It runs on QB64 on a DigitalOcean droplet. Here’s the source: https://github.com/jamonholmgren/jamon.dev https://github.com/jamonholmgren/jamon.dev Check app.bas for the QBasic code. I may eventually release a CLI and library that lets people spin up a QB64 website in little time.

knewter 3y ago
You could serve your qbasic website from an old Android phone in a drawer my dude.
- thatha7777 3y ago
  Not with BabaBASIC (for now?). No networking support whatsoever :P
  - knewter 3y ago
    Fairly certain jamon can wire in some io, let me nerd snipe in peace plz
    - thatha7777 3y ago
      My apologies. BabaBASIC is here to make any Android-related anachronistic dream come true (˃̣̣̥ w ˂̣̣̥).
      - thatha7777 3y ago
        I think I have a general idea on how to implement basic TCP/IP sockets while staying true to QBasic 4.5's spirit (i.e. not introducing functions like _OpenConnection/_ConnectionAddress etc.) The "API" I have in mind would look something like ``` OPEN "TCP:\127.0.0.1\80\LISTEN" FOR INPUT AS #1 INPUT #1, CONN$ IF CONN$ <> "" REM CONN$ contains something like "TCP:\127.0.0.1\80\REMOTE_HOST\REMOTE_PORT" OPEN CONN$ AS #2 REM ... respond to request PRINT #2, "200 OK" CLOSE #2 END IF ```
- jamon51 3y ago
  Don't tempt me.
  - thatha7777 3y ago
    Ugh, jamon51, I think we slashdotted your website
thatha7777 3y ago
This is awesome! Kudos! I wish there was some kind of "computing archeology" discipline
- qup 3y ago
  The folks who built this stuff are still alive. Historian would be a better fit, and we can archive the actual first-hand accounts if we don't waste the chance.
thom 3y ago
Ha, I once created a web framework in classic ASP that was inspired by QBasic - you’d use pure HTML templates but in handlers you’d write LOCATE statements using XPath selectors instead of screen coordinates, followed by PRINT statements to actually fill in the content of an element. Never tried to actually write it in QBasic itself though. Nice work!
- thatha7777 3y ago
  Thank you! XPATH in LOCATE stmts sounds like asking a disco dancer to moonwalk -- out of its era, but oddly fascinating to watch
  - thom 3y ago
    It honestly wasn’t a bad approach in practice, many years later there was a similar library called Enlive in Clojure which I genuinely enjoyed. Forces you to use nice semantic IDs and classes for everything. I suppose if you wanted the real BASIC experience you’d actually just PEEK and POKE with character offsets into the templates or something ungodly like that.
kristopolous 3y ago
I was confused for a few seconds. This is to help others. The user didn't build their website, they built the web server, a more difficult task. I was expecting a classic CGI gateway approach with some templating support and maybe a data source (not necessarily sql but perhaps INI). Instead it's an HTTP server

knewter 3y ago

You could serve your qbasic website from an old Android phone in a drawer my dude.

thatha7777 3y ago
Not with BabaBASIC (for now?). No networking support whatsoever :P
- knewter 3y ago
  Fairly certain jamon can wire in some io, let me nerd snipe in peace plz
  - thatha7777 3y ago
    My apologies. BabaBASIC is here to make any Android-related anachronistic dream come true (˃̣̣̥ w ˂̣̣̥).
    - thatha7777 3y ago
      I think I have a general idea on how to implement basic TCP/IP sockets while staying true to QBasic 4.5's spirit (i.e. not introducing functions like _OpenConnection/_ConnectionAddress etc.) The "API" I have in mind would look something like ``` OPEN "TCP:\127.0.0.1\80\LISTEN" FOR INPUT AS #1 INPUT #1, CONN$ IF CONN$ <> "" REM CONN$ contains something like "TCP:\127.0.0.1\80\REMOTE_HOST\REMOTE_PORT" OPEN CONN$ AS #2 REM ... respond to request PRINT #2, "200 OK" CLOSE #2 END IF ```
jamon51 3y ago
Don't tempt me.
- thatha7777 3y ago
  Ugh, jamon51, I think we slashdotted your website

thatha7777 3y ago

This is awesome! Kudos! I wish there was some kind of "computing archeology" discipline

qup 3y ago
The folks who built this stuff are still alive. Historian would be a better fit, and we can archive the actual first-hand accounts if we don't waste the chance.

thom 3y ago

Ha, I once created a web framework in classic ASP that was inspired by QBasic - you’d use pure HTML templates but in handlers you’d write LOCATE statements using XPath selectors instead of screen coordinates, followed by PRINT statements to actually fill in the content of an element. Never tried to actually write it in QBasic itself though. Nice work!

thatha7777 3y ago
Thank you! XPATH in LOCATE stmts sounds like asking a disco dancer to moonwalk -- out of its era, but oddly fascinating to watch
- thom 3y ago
  It honestly wasn’t a bad approach in practice, many years later there was a similar library called Enlive in Clojure which I genuinely enjoyed. Forces you to use nice semantic IDs and classes for everything. I suppose if you wanted the real BASIC experience you’d actually just PEEK and POKE with character offsets into the templates or something ungodly like that.

kristopolous 3y ago

I was confused for a few seconds. This is to help others. The user didn't build their website, they built the web server, a more difficult task. I was expecting a classic CGI gateway approach with some templating support and maybe a data source (not necessarily sql but perhaps INI). Instead it's an HTTP server