[HN Gopher] Craft Basic (Windows 95 and up)
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Craft Basic (Windows 95 and up)
Author : lintalist
Score : 49 points
Date : 2025-05-18 09:08 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lucidapogee.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lucidapogee.com)
| lintalist wrote:
| "Freeware and open source. (source included with the download).
| The zipped download is 259kb and includes the interpreter,
| documentation, and over 80 examples. The unzipped IDE/interpreter
| exe is 274kb. (it's been growing as I add features). Exe doesn't
| write anything to system registry. (just uses Windows api). Exe
| will run on it's own without any of the includes files. The IDE
| automatically regenerates it's help file in the same directory."
| homebrewer wrote:
| And the guy who wrote this:
|
| > .. work at a gas station and don't make money coding.
|
| (From the readme of one of his other projects.)
|
| If self-proclaimed "senior software engineers" worked on this,
| we would have a multi gigabyte download with an Electron-based
| editor.
|
| There's a donation link in there with a very fair asking price.
| rvnx wrote:
| Programming was sometimes even easier in the past, this is
| actually one of the reason for BASIC to exist: "Beginner's
| All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code".
|
| On Amstrad CPC 464 / 6128, you just entered the interpreter,
| you could immediately interact with existing code and start
| playing around with it.
|
| Today, it's more complex, because the Operating System
| developers deliver more complex APIs to fit the needs of the
| plethora of developers, and the level of abstraction, and
| responsibilities of each teams / components.
|
| Though natural selection tends to favor the simpler / more
| friendly languages (Python / Javascript), and others like
| Haskell, Erlang, Lisp, etc... are just for people in museums
| who see beauty in complexity.
|
| Some say:
|
| Simples see beauty in complexity. Smarts see beauty in
| simplicity.
| asveikau wrote:
| > Today, it's more complex, because the Operating System
| developers deliver more complex APIs to fit the needs of
| the plethora of developers
|
| This project is evidently coded against Win32 and runs on
| any Windows OS in the last 30 years.
|
| Which is to say the "operating system developers" provided
| APIs in 1995 that are still there, still work.
|
| Last I checked, Electron isn't an OS API.
| dlachausse wrote:
| I think QBasic was the perfect level of ease of use versus
| ability to produce useful programs. It had a full featured
| editor that could run your program with a single keystroke.
| It included support for graphics and music. Most
| importantly, it had extensive builtin documentation.
| bitwize wrote:
| It's more complex because the tooling optimizes for teams
| of developers rather than single developers. For example,
| back in the day it was expected that programmers knew
| enough of how UI works for their given platform to where
| they could either drag widgets onto a form (e.g., VB,
| Delphi) or just code up where they're supposed to go (e.g.,
| Tcl/Tk) and they'd have a UI for their application. These
| days there's a huge division of labor between how widgets
| are supposed to look and feel, and where they're supposed
| to go (designers), what their actions are supposed to be
| (front end developers), and what state changes those
| actions represent (back end developers). These are
| _assumed_ to be done by different people, so the tooling
| supports each person 's workflow, e.g. L^HFigma for the
| designer, React for the front end, etc.
| bitwize wrote:
| Bisqwit is a nearly Carmack-tier programming genius. For a
| time he drove a truck to make a living and just programmed in
| his spare time.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@Bisqwit/
|
| I'm a "senior software engineer" by title (I need to make
| more money than I would working at a gas station or driving a
| truck, and programming is what I'm relatively good at), I
| love things like this, and I fight for simplicity and lack of
| bloat whenever I can, sometimes putting myself at odds with
| my colleagues and Management.
| Borg3 wrote:
| Yeah :) I have something a bit similar here. An old Ruby
| version compiled for Win32 (Win2000 and up) with graph
| library ready to use.
|
| 991k ruby.exe*
|
| I wrote performance monitor in it for fun:
| http://borg.uu3.net/~borg/?gperf
| behringer wrote:
| Shameless plug but come hang out on discord with us if you're
| into all things BASIC https://discord.gg/Ge4ErMcdQR
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