I was not really planning on releasing a post on an ancient programming language but I have a small warm spot in my heart about GW-Basic. Microsoft recently open sourced the original code. Now, I have no intention of ever programming in this language but one of my earliest customers used it for his system. I learned on Q-Basic so it was very similar. It was a walk down memory lane.
Anyway, I heard of it this morning. I did my first posts about a modern programmer dealing with GW-Basic so it has a relevance to the site.
If anyone stumbles on this post looking for what to do about GW-Basic, let me know. I have several solutions to problems with running something that old on modern equipment. I might even dust off the old GW-Basic posts and re-post them. That is of course if I still have them. I hope so because my favorite was how to get it running on modern equipment.
Getting back on topic, go to GitHub and check it out. I will be curious if there is still a community willing to work on it or will it just be a little museum piece because all the people who loved it retired.
Here is a little GW-Basic help for any poor souls working on it.
Since I have had to work on GW-Basic in the past here are my notes for that project about the language commands.
- ‘ = Comment
- cls = Clear
- Input = User prompt to store in variable
- xxx$ = Variable
- Dim = Variable declaration
- Data = Declare constants
- For = For loop
- To = Range in for loop
- Next = increment to next value in for loop
- Read = Read Data Statement and assign to variable
- Open = Open file assign to variable
- Close = Release input file from open
- Print = Print Input
- If = If Statement
- GOTO = a goto statment
- EOF = End of file function
- Common = Take variable and passes it to chained program
- Chain = Call on another program
I am always up to talk about the old basic languages so feel free to send me an email or comment down below.