Basic

**HippyVanMan** · February 17th, 2007

I'm interested in programming in BASIC, but I'd like to here some opinions on the best or most popular cross-platform basic languages, so as I can code under Ubuntu and under XP.
I want to program in BASIC because I'm not a complete idiot and have programmed, albeit poorly in other languages, and BASIC looks very easy to pick up, and I'd like to spend about an hour on it later today, but I don't want to pick a rubbishy dialect of BASIC. I also don't want things like visual basic, or it's linux copy-cats, vb makes me feel ill, i'd like plain old, nice simply, retro, basic. Also, I'd like a compilable variety, I mean, interpreters are good so if theres a sort with an interpreter and a compiler that's good. But I also don't want to code in the sort of basic where the only two known coders are myself and a fifty year old man who lived with his mum in texas.

Thank you for any recommendations or even better links.

**Mirrorball** · February 17th, 2007

As far as I know, the only people that program in BASIC nowadays are Visual Basic programmers. Even if I am wrong, it's not a popular language among Linux users. I'd suggest that you learn Python or Ruby (I prefer Python), which are cross-platform and just as easy to learn.

**g3k0** · February 17th, 2007

Eh... I dont know if there is a Qbasic for linux but its used... some. Not too many people use Basic.

**thomasaaron** · February 17th, 2007

If you don't want to go with something like Visual BASIC, there are two basic compilers I know of that are available in Ubuntu's repositories: yabasic and bwbasic

Both are pretty good, as far as BASIC goes.

That said, I'm going to give you some unwanted advice.

GO WITH PYTHON.

If you purchase "Pyhon for Dummies" (no offense, I bought it myself) you will quickly find that Python can be programmed procedurally (like old BASIC). You can do everything in Python that basic could do if you want to just keep it simple. But it also offers more room for growth than you'll probably ever use.

There is also a TON of information, tutorials, etc... available for Python, making it simple enough to learn, and a lot of what you knew from BASIC will easily transfer to Python.

But if you insist on just plain old basic, I kind of enjoy messing around with yabasic.

Good luck,
Tom

**Wybiral** · February 18th, 2007

Basic4SDL: http://p13.wikispaces.com/B4SDL

It's mostly an OpenGL+SDL playground for 3d graphics and such...
But it works on linux and stays pretty true to the BASIC syntax.

There's also freeBASIC.

But...

BASIC is pretty outdated these days. I agree that python is very simple, common, and powerful.