FreeBASIC

I guess I’m from what you could call the Redneck School of Programming. I’m slowly learning more modern techniques such as OOP, but deep down, I still think in BASIC, use the occasional GOTO, and don’t like Java. It’s like wearing socks with sandals — I know it’s uncouth, but it’s just so darn comfortable that I don’t care. BASIC is a great language for many kinds of things (it’s actually a lot like Fortran). If you don’t need to use linked lists or other pointer-based constructs, it’s both easy and powerful. Unfortunately, for a long time, the only BASIC implementation worth using that I had come across was QuickBasic 7.1.

QuickBasic was great “back in the day,” when everything had to fit into 640k of base memory and VGA graphics was state-of-the-art — but being DOS-based, it was definitely showing its age. A few years ago, I came across FreeBASIC (and its development environment FBIDE). FreeBASIC builds on the work started by QuickBASIC, and drags the language kicking and screaming into, well, at least the late ’90s. It’s the best of both worlds — 90% of the time, QuickBASIC programs just simply work when ported to FreeBASIC, and most of QuickBASIC’s limitations are now gone. Video modes are now customizable: 1920x1200x24bits? No problem. High memory is available: Want a 1GB array? FreeBASIC will do it. I’m sure you could even cut a tin can with it (but you wouldn’t want to!) It’s also fast: it beat a Visual C++ version of a single-threaded matrix multiplication routine, on a recent project.

If you’re a fellow BASICosaurus, or are just looking for a very straightforward and fast way to write programs on a Windows PC, check it out. The best part is that, like the name implies, it’s Free (as in speech and as in beer). FBIDE is definitely recommended, too, since it provides a nice coding environment, allowing you to run programs with a single click etc.