[HN Gopher] IntyBASIC: A Basic Compiler for Intellivision
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       IntyBASIC: A Basic Compiler for Intellivision
        
       Author : joemanaco
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2025-06-29 05:17 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nanochess.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nanochess.org)
        
       | gxd wrote:
       | Wonderful project.
       | 
       | Despite the great languages we have today, I still think that
       | BASIC is among the best languages for sparking the love of
       | programming in beginners.
        
         | dlachausse wrote:
         | I think Microsoft QBasic in particular was the sweet spot. It
         | was an easy to pick up language and runtime that was powerful
         | enough to make real productivity applications and games. It
         | shipped with 2 great demo games, Nibbles and Gorillas, that
         | were fun to play and easy to understand. It had a pretty good
         | IDE and most importantly, easy to browse, beginner friendly
         | online help. I couldn't imagine a better introduction to
         | programming during my childhood. Best of all, it was installed
         | by default in MS-DOS 5.0 and later.
         | 
         | I'm really hoping that it gets open sourced by Microsoft in the
         | near future.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | QuickBasic would be much better due to having a compiler.
           | 
           | Turbo BASIC was also quite good, but Borland lost interest.
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | After decades of thinking I was so much more 31337 by learning
         | other languages -- OO, functional, etc. -- I can't help but
         | agree. BASIC is the sweet spot for introducing what programming
         | is and the fundamental concepts. I kind of laugh when I hear
         | talk that LLMs will finally enable nontechnical people to build
         | their own apps, when BASIC did that back in the 60s.
        
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       (page generated 2025-07-02 23:01 UTC)