Just read this online, its primarily about QBASIC. Thought it was pretty funny:
In the landscape of programming languages, Quick Basic resides upon a mountain, surrounded by mists, and insulated from the world beyond.
At a far extreme, on the other end of the world, should you travel that far, you will find the most intelectually eloquent language ever invented, LISP. In the realm of LISP, from the Basic programmers perspective, things look strange and soft. Symbols are tangled and twisted, and yet somehow slowly unfold under the light of reason. From the high refuge of Quick Basic, LISP doesn't even look like programming. Only the long journey down the mountain and across the wilds of deformed and crippled scripting languages can shape your eyes to see the beauty of a LISP proccessor as it slowly meditates upon itself, always looking inward upon its own mathematical truth. But that is a far way off.
Within view, upon a craggy spire of hard rock, many have seen C. Encrusted upon brittle rock, it is etched by the flow of magma, continually belching sulphur and cracking into new formations. It is a land of iron, maleable and refinable. It is a land of legend and of simplicity. It is a place where a rock is a rock. Nothing moves without being moved. Pascal, within a country park, is tended by blind gardeners. They care not for the fruit, only for the plant. Their lawns are manicured like model train landscapes, and all sign of contruction is carefully hidden, and it a general rule of the garden that nothing may be taken back to the world beyond.
In the low lands, near the sea lanes of commerce, we can see the cities, some covered in soot while other glitter with novelty. Here we find Visual Basic within the store fronts like plastic costume jewely, gaudy and sophmoric. Java, like an army of paper pusher, incessantly reshuffles itself. Database queery languages man the check out counters and HTML covers everything like shrink wrap. PHP has murdered Pearl as gone unpunished.
Deep within the city, maintained by public funds, a Zoo has been build. In the center is the Penquin House, and nearby you find Python, and awk. Strange animal abound here, only known well by the zoo keepers. Bash, Korn, autoconf, grep, and many creatures thought to be extinct.
The sky is full of the clouds of numbers, vectors, transforms, sets, and function ever shifting, made of nothing. And deep within the bowls of the earth, beneath everything save the very core of flip flops, busses, and caches, the elements march in constant step. They vary by country and climate, but everywhere composes of bit strings tightly encoded, the machine instruction grind out the rhythm of the world.
The adherents of Assembly Language wander above from country to country, shamans of a dark and comfortable tradition, undisturbed by the viccitudes of each country. They visit like prophets the cities and mountains, with the power of old gods, carrying nothing but hex editors and proccessor manuals. To them the sky is as high as a man is tall. They consider the passing clouds and shape the ground to match.
Quick Basic, upon its refuge mountain, remains the keeper of a simple mystery. Its commands lay spread like a painter palette, waiting to be arranged. It waits ready to be awed by innovation, ready to envelope new ideas and soften them with its persistent ethos of "Try and See". Nearby it keeps DOS, caring for it in it old, old age. It has sent FreeBasic down the mountain to soften the cities. Foremost, the mountain is a place that respects the individual, inviting each to develope on his or her own. So long and there are those ready to explore, it will continue upon the mountain.
I love QBASIC as much as the next guy, but give me a break. Although it does kind of have that cult following, mountain like aura to it... but I couldn't help but wonder, where would BlitzBasic (all variations) be? I kind of picture it as at the waterfall flowing off the mountain of QBASIC into the modern world. What do you think?
In the landscape of programming languages, Quick Basic resides upon a mountain, surrounded by mists, and insulated from the world beyond.
At a far extreme, on the other end of the world, should you travel that far, you will find the most intelectually eloquent language ever invented, LISP. In the realm of LISP, from the Basic programmers perspective, things look strange and soft. Symbols are tangled and twisted, and yet somehow slowly unfold under the light of reason. From the high refuge of Quick Basic, LISP doesn't even look like programming. Only the long journey down the mountain and across the wilds of deformed and crippled scripting languages can shape your eyes to see the beauty of a LISP proccessor as it slowly meditates upon itself, always looking inward upon its own mathematical truth. But that is a far way off.
Within view, upon a craggy spire of hard rock, many have seen C. Encrusted upon brittle rock, it is etched by the flow of magma, continually belching sulphur and cracking into new formations. It is a land of iron, maleable and refinable. It is a land of legend and of simplicity. It is a place where a rock is a rock. Nothing moves without being moved. Pascal, within a country park, is tended by blind gardeners. They care not for the fruit, only for the plant. Their lawns are manicured like model train landscapes, and all sign of contruction is carefully hidden, and it a general rule of the garden that nothing may be taken back to the world beyond.
In the low lands, near the sea lanes of commerce, we can see the cities, some covered in soot while other glitter with novelty. Here we find Visual Basic within the store fronts like plastic costume jewely, gaudy and sophmoric. Java, like an army of paper pusher, incessantly reshuffles itself. Database queery languages man the check out counters and HTML covers everything like shrink wrap. PHP has murdered Pearl as gone unpunished.
Deep within the city, maintained by public funds, a Zoo has been build. In the center is the Penquin House, and nearby you find Python, and awk. Strange animal abound here, only known well by the zoo keepers. Bash, Korn, autoconf, grep, and many creatures thought to be extinct.
The sky is full of the clouds of numbers, vectors, transforms, sets, and function ever shifting, made of nothing. And deep within the bowls of the earth, beneath everything save the very core of flip flops, busses, and caches, the elements march in constant step. They vary by country and climate, but everywhere composes of bit strings tightly encoded, the machine instruction grind out the rhythm of the world.
The adherents of Assembly Language wander above from country to country, shamans of a dark and comfortable tradition, undisturbed by the viccitudes of each country. They visit like prophets the cities and mountains, with the power of old gods, carrying nothing but hex editors and proccessor manuals. To them the sky is as high as a man is tall. They consider the passing clouds and shape the ground to match.
Quick Basic, upon its refuge mountain, remains the keeper of a simple mystery. Its commands lay spread like a painter palette, waiting to be arranged. It waits ready to be awed by innovation, ready to envelope new ideas and soften them with its persistent ethos of "Try and See". Nearby it keeps DOS, caring for it in it old, old age. It has sent FreeBasic down the mountain to soften the cities. Foremost, the mountain is a place that respects the individual, inviting each to develope on his or her own. So long and there are those ready to explore, it will continue upon the mountain.
I love QBASIC as much as the next guy, but give me a break. Although it does kind of have that cult following, mountain like aura to it... but I couldn't help but wonder, where would BlitzBasic (all variations) be? I kind of picture it as at the waterfall flowing off the mountain of QBASIC into the modern world. What do you think?