Quite BASIC Official Blog

Quite BASIC Video Introduction

2008-08-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

Compatibility Step 7

2008-06-11T21:43:00.000-07:00

Another step towards running "Hunt the Wumpus" on Quite BASIC! :)

Today I added conditional GOTO to the language. I did it with mixed feelings because it is one ugly construct, but many early BASIC programs did use it.

So, now you can do things like:
10 LET R = 1 + RND(3)
20 ON R GOTO 100,200,300
...

That little code snippet will randomly make the program go to either line 100, 200, or 300.

Oh, and I also added the INT(x) function. It is the same as the existing FLOOR(x), but INT(x) is the name that classic BASIC programs used.

Compatibility Step 6 -- Multi dimensional Arrays

2008-06-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

This one was not straight forward because javascript doesn't have a simple syntactic construct to create a multi dimensional arrays. As of today though, QuiteBASIC has just that. For example:

10 DIM A(5,6,4)

declares a 3D array.

The array can then be used in LET commands and in expressions just like you expect it to. For example:

20 LET A(1,2,3) = 64
30 PRINT SQR(A(1,2,3))

will print 8.

This only works with the DIM command. The ARRAY command just declares a 1D array of dynamic size. And this only works with the parenthesis syntax for array indices. So A[1,2,3] is a syntax error.

I also added the TAB(x) function which is typically used in PRINT commands to format the output. For example:

40 PRINT TAB(5); "Hello!"

will print five spaces followed by "Hello!".

Compatibility Step 5

2008-05-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

One tricky difference between QuiteBASIC and the real old classic BASIC dialects were that QuiteBASIC were only allowing brackets to enclose array indices, like so: A[5].

As of today, QuiteBASIC will also allow parentheses like this: A(5).

This was one of the big remaining incompatibilities. The few most important remaining issues are multidimensional arrays and the (ugly) "ON" command.

I keep track of incompatibilities on this page in the club house.

Compatibility Step 4

2008-02-10T18:30:00.000-08:00

Another step towards compatibility with "real" classic BASIC: as of today, the colon terminator works in Quite BASIC! So now you can do things like:
10 LET A = 17 : LET B = 4711
Myeah, I know... Pretty "basic" stuff, but still.

Cool use of a Quite BASIC gadget

2008-02-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

Lewis Palmer on his site about "Volcanos in the making" has written some pretty cool Quite BASIC programs to create animations. The Quite BASIC programs are published on his site as Google Gadgets.

Update: The pages are no longer online. It was fun as long as it lasted though.

Check it out at:
http://scienceperiod2.spruz.com/
Each of the three sections: Subduction zones, Divergent Boundaries, and Hot Spots have an animation powered by a Quite BASIC gadget.

Compatibility Step 3

2008-02-04T22:00:00.000-08:00

Good news!
DATA/READ is now part of the Quite BASIC language.

The bad news is that I identified a few more incompatibilities with classic BASIC.

Array indices; Quite BASIC uses [] but classic BASIC uses ().
The DEF keyword. Quite BASIC does not support this.

I am tracking all this loosely in a doc at the club house.

Compatibility Step 2

2008-02-03T11:33:00.000-08:00

Today I deployed an update to the interpreter with two fixes for incomptibilities.

Variables. You are no longer limited to single letter variable names. Yay! As of today Quite BASIC variables are composed by a letter optionally followed by digits. Also, dollar sign is now allowed to be appended. Quite BASIC variables are not typed, so the dollar sign has no menaing, but is is allowed for backwards compatibility. Example variable names: A, A1, A47, A$, A5$.
Shortcut for GOTO commands in conditionals. As of today, there is no need to type the GOTO keyword for a simple jump in an IF command. Example: "IF A=B THEN 200 ELSE 300".

I updated the doc at Club Quite BASIC to reflect these fixes.

Next up are DATA/READ commands and the semicolon delimiter. If you have feedback on which incompatibilities are more important, feel free to drop a message at feedback@quitebasic.com or in the comments here.

Compatibility Step 1

2008-02-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

Quite BASIC has the look of classic BASIC and most of the good old commands and functions are supported, but there are still some compatibility issues.

So, I have started to track the issues and I am going to start fixing incompatibilities as fast as my time permits. I wrote down a few known issues in a doc over at Club Quite BASIC.

Today I deployed fixes for two annoyances. As of today, the DIM command works. You can still only declare one-dimensional arrays but still... Also, semicolon now works as it should in PRINT statements. So now you can use semicolon to join multiple expressions in your PRINT commands.

Club Quite BASIC

2007-07-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

Today we opened the doors to the clubhouse.

club.quitebasic.com is a place for classic BASIC programmers to publish their programs. Users create a user profile and add their own programs to the site.

Programs are wrapped in a "Project" that includes some meta information including the author, a short description of the program, and what canvas resolution to use.

Anyone can browse the projects on club.quitebasic.com. They can be sorted by popularity, recency, category, or author.

In addition, any project on club.quitebasic.com automatically defines a Google Gadget that can be put on anyone's iGoogle page, or by cut-and-pasting some HTML, it can be placed on most other web pages too.

Classic Sorting Algorithms

2007-05-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

I added a new category among the "house projects" on Quite BASIC: Algorithms. The first projects of the category are two classic sorting algorithms: Bubble Sort and Merge Sort.

This is my first update for a while because my day job has been occupying most of my attention lately, but traffic to the site is still brisk which is exciting. The Google PageRank is now 6 on a scale to 10 which is fun too.

IE7 and Quite BASIC

2007-01-15T22:14:00.000-08:00

Alright, I can see in the server logs that more and more people are switching to IE7 now. I am hopeful Quite BASIC does not suffer severly from the change. I have tested all the "house projects".

I had to change a color name in the "Wall" game from "lightGray" to "lightGrey" since the former wasn't supported in IE7 for some weird reason. But other than that all house projects seem to function properly in IE7.

IE7 has new security and privacy settings, and I have anecdotal reports that this may block the INPUT command which is used for example in the popular Trebuchet game. I have not reproduced this problem, but if you do experience it, please let me know so I can try to find a workaround or post proper instructions to change the privacy settings.

Strange Attractor

2007-01-14T21:35:00.000-08:00

I just added a new math project, "The Henon Strange Attractor", to the house projects. This is the 6^th mathematics project and like most of them it is a short program of a few dozen lines.

The Henon map is a simple two dimensional discrete dynamical system that leads to fascinating mathematics. There is a pretty good starting point at Wikipedia for anyone looking to learn more about chaos theory and the Henon map.

Two new "house projects"

2007-01-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

We have recently added two "house projects" on the Projects menu:

Etchy-Sketchy by Chill -- this is a simple drawing program kind of like the classic Etch-a-Sketch^(TM) game.
Bifurcations -- This is a math project that plots the bifurcation diagram of the logistic function. I remember doing this myself in high school age and getting really exciting about the rich complexity that comes out of such a simple formula. In that sense it is much like the Mandelbrot set.

blog.quitebasic.com

2007-01-05T19:26:00.000-08:00

Yay! Blogger added a custom domain feature.

So from now on, this blog's home is: blog.quitebasic.com. The old URLs should redirect, so hopefully this will not be an inconvenience to anyone.

A new year and Quite BASIC turns two months

2007-01-01T18:59:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone!

Since the launch on November 1st, over 10,000 people have visited the site, and 2007 is going to be very interesting.

A few days ago Quite BASIC was featured in the German computer magazine PC Welt, and we have seen a lot of traffic to the site from Germany ever since. However, none of this early success in spreading the word mean much unless we get the word out to teachers. So I'll say it again: please tell any teachers you know about Quite BASIC!

If you are a teacher thinking about using Quite BASIC, feel free to contact me if you need any assistance!

You can reach me at: feedback@quitebasic.com.

Do you know any teachers?

2006-12-26T18:52:00.000-08:00

Today Quite BASIC broke through the top 100,000 web sites on Alexa daily page ranking. Right now it is ranked around 67,000. OK, I know that there is a lot of fluctuation and a fair amount of randomness in these rankings, but nevertheless it is a great validation of our concept.

Now I need you to tell any teacher you know. If you know a math or science high school teacher, please let them know about the Quite BASIC website! Actually, please tell any teacher you know! They can pass the news on to their colleagues.

The Wall Breakout Game

2006-12-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

I just added a new game to the "house projects" on Quite BASIC. This is the most complete game so far. It is a variant in the old breakout genre.

Try it! I put a Google Gadget in the right sidebar right in this blog!

Btw, did you know you can do the same on your web pages? Any of the gadgets on Quite BASIC can easily be put on any website.

Faster and Prettier!

2006-12-19T00:05:00.000-08:00

I have just deployed a new improved Quite BASIC to the server. The really exciting news is that it is about 15x faster!

The games play much better with the new speed and the Mandelbrot project really benefits too. We upped the canvas resolution to take advantage of the new horse power.

We also gave the gadgets a facelift with a set of shiny new skins. They look much better! And you got to check out the new and improved Trebuchet game!

There are also a few new handy functions and commands added to the language.

For more details, check out the update notes on the Help menu of the Quite BASIC site.

Thank you Trail Blazers!

2006-12-18T17:38:00.000-08:00

I noticed in the server logs today that the first few users have started to use the user Google Gadget. That's the gadget that lets you take your own Quite BASIC projects to your Google Home page or any other web page of yours.

This is awesome! Thank you (you know who you are), this is what it is all about!

The feedback from you early adopters is very important, and you have a real chance to make a difference if you send a note to: feedback@quitebasic.com.

Good winds

2006-12-15T17:13:00.000-08:00

Quite BASIC stayed in the top 10 of joel.reddit.com for four days just before they had their outage. Now that reddit is back up, we are still hovering at number 12 and are getting lots of referrals. The people at StumbleUpon like Quite BASIC too. Today I'm seing a lot of traffic to the Mandelbrot project page coming from there.

Since the launch November 1st, there has been a steady increase in page views. The site is not three months old yet, so it is too early to look at the Alexa 3 months average, but today the one week average page rank is around 500k.

Buzz around the Internet

2006-12-13T23:12:00.000-08:00

These are still the early days, but Quite BASIC has already seen a lot of coverage around the web. David Brin's post on his blog created some waves and many other bloggers picked up the story too. Among the more influential were Raph Koster 's and Ian Bogost's posts.

We are proud receivers of the award "cool math site of the week" from Kabol, a website run by the Canadian Mathematical Society. Quite BASIC is Knot 327 in the braid.

But wait! There's more. Quite BASIC was also featured in the weekly newsletter of mathforum.org run by the Drexel School of Education.

Introduction

2006-12-13T21:55:00.000-08:00

This is the official blog of quitebasic.com. Quite BASIC has already turned out to be an unlikely hit on the Internet and it is time to open up this channel.

It all started when I read an article by David Brin in Salon (Why Johnny can't code). The article is about how bright kids today don't learn to program the way kids used to. He points out that there are millions of students with textbooks containing BASIC code examples, but that the vast majority do not know how to try them.

I proceeded to write a DHTML environment for writing, testing, and running classic BASIC programs. It was key to make the site as accessible as possible. Consequently there is no sign-up or even download necessary. Just go to the site and start typing in the program. -- Simplicity is key.

Now it turns out that there is another crowd that enjoy the site even more. Yes, you guessed it: middle aged geeks like myself who like to remember the good old times. Incidentally, they are by now often parents so it works out really well.

I will use this blog to communicate updates to the service and general discussion.