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Purebasic elapsed time2/20/2023 Yet, while most of those QBasic concepts are today generally considered as red flags by our peers, they each served a very specific purpose at the time: to keep the language simple and accessible, a notion that every other language has left behind in favor of flexibility, complexity and logic. Following this advice, I should have probably started off with the basics of the ruby language which I love. the list goes on… When developing a skill, it is much better to acquire the right reflexes from the start rather than have to correct years of bad practice. It introduces one to concepts widely considered harmful, uses awkward syntax for implicit declarations, is not case sensitive, is non-zero-based, etc. Yes, QBasic is a terrible procedural language. “OMG please don’t teach him GOTOs!!” 10 PRINT “OH NO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!” 30 years later, QBasic is still the best when it comes to discovering programming. After 5 months, I ended up with a disappointing conclusion: nothing is even close to what I had back in another era. I have even inquired of the Great Oracles of StackOverflow, to no avail. ![]() My quest has led me to endless forums, through which I have tried countless suggestions: SmallBasic, Pico-8, Smalltalk, Scratch, etc. And for the past 5 months, I have been looking for the holy grail of language/IDE for kids in the hope of turning that spark of interest into a memorable experience… ![]() Since that very day, Noah has been asking me repeatedly to teach him how to make his own video games. About 5 months ago, I left my family for my yearly pilgrimage of ludum dare: a game dev competition during which I lock myself away with friends, return to a state of primitive caveman, not sleep for 48h, and create a full game from scratch (play it at the end of this post!) As I proudly showed my revolutionary AAA title to my wife, Noah was naturally intrigued and I introduced him to the world of code, showing him how simple words (he had just learned how to read) produced an actual game. The other love of his life is Super Mario Maker, and it’s been a thrill to see him play the same game and levels that I played when I was his age. ![]() If he could trade his family for a 2 hour session of playing minecraft, he would do it in a heartbeat. My oldest son Noah turned 7 three months ago.
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