QBasic

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

It is fashionable to slam QBasic.  For what it is, it is quite good.  You 
will notice that Pascal code only ran a factor of 2 faster.  So a 
"compiled" code only beat an "interpreted" code by a factor of two.

Of course QBasic is not interpreted.  I think they call it a 
"generator".  It is really done very well, and even the final code is 
optimized.  You have to be very careful in writing time testing loops in 
QBasic or the compiler will optimize them out.  There is seldom any speed 
advantage in compiled code vs running in the environment where you have all 
those nice tools.

So while I would probably not slam on the brakes too hard if Bill Gates ran 
in front of my truck, I still think he produced a great package in 
QBasic.  I am not so sure about VBasic, the program that replaced it.  I 
suspect by then Bill had learned that he wanted to write bad code and tie 
it into his system rather than to write good code.

Tom Droege