On 1/28/2015 3:16 AM, Steve Nickolas wrote: > On Wed, 28 Jan 2015, JAYDEN CHARBONNEAU wrote: > >> To be clear,it was the first version of Microsoft's QUICKBASIC.It was the >> only version that supported creating EXE files. > Every version of "QuickBasic" supports that, as opposed to QBASIC. Correct. With the last version of the QuickBasic compiler being called PDS (v7.1) for "Professional Development System" before they changed/switched to "Visual BASIC for DOS"... >> Quite frankly,and I've said this multiple times (My opinion will not >> change),a good program is a good program,no matter the source.(Here's a >> funny way of putting it).If I were to make a program that saves the >> world,but it was made with the world's worst compiler,would that >> disqualify the program? Well, the issue is rather if you can achieve a certain goal with a certain choice of development environment/language/compiler. >> QBASIC may not be open source,but it's free (Like turbo C++). > Not...really. > > It's "free" if you have a legitimate copy of IBM DOS 5, MS-DOS 5 or 6.x, > or certain versions of Windows NT. Again, we need to be very clear here. QBASIC (the interpreter) was free as a part of MS-DOS 5.0 through MS-DOS 6.22 (and NOT part of IBM-DOS 5.x, they still included BASICA (GWBasic equivalent of MS-DOS, as all IBM PCs still had BASIC in ROM). IBM switched for later versions to REXX instead of BASIC. I am not 100% sure, as I don't have any original DOS package from those days handy (all in my storage), but if you legally posses a copy of a version of DOS that included QBASIC (the interpreter), you can still use this particular program on any other OS. There is AFAIK back in those days no exclusion to that possibility with the license terms. Such things became common only much later...
QuickBasic, the compiler, was never free, not even remotely like TurboC(++). I am aware that there are a few web sites that offer downloads for various versions of it, and it seems Microsoft doesn't care about it, but those are not legally obtainable copies. > Back in the day (I'm not old enough to remember this,but I know this as > fact),everything was made in BASIC. > You "know" this, but actually, at that time a lot of stuff was actually > done in assembler or maybe Pascal, not BASIC. I *am* old enough to > remember this. Well, I am old enough and I can tell you that barely "everything" was made in BASIC. BASIC was a just one of many choices people had back then. I used BASIC to some degree but did write far more software in Pascal, assembler, C, Forth, Fortran... > Even OPERATING SYSTEMS were basically a BASIC intrepeter. > Only, really, on Commodore computers. > Well, no. A lot of computers back in the early days came with a BASIC interpreter in ROM but that could hardly be called an "operating system". And for those computers that had access to floppy drives back then, in most cases were able to load a totally different OS from those, with the most common one being CP/M (the first wide spread "generic"/vendor agnostic OS), TRS-DOS (for Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 and derivatives) and Apple DOS (Apple II&III). In each of those cases, any programming language was again an optional program, and you had even back then the choice of dozens of programing languages and compilers... And the reason that the IBM-PC had a BASIC in ROM was simply due to the fact that in their ineptitude, the IBM sales managers tried to offer a basic IBM-PC (5150) with just 64B RAM and a cassette interface as the only means of external storage. And that was dropped rather quickly... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
