QBasic

Well, I think we are in those at this point because I don't think anyone really knows.

And the debates between experts in technology and AI and the differing opinions may be more dispersed than I've ever seen since I've been rubbing my face in technology since 1982 with a QBasic code on a 16K RAM only computer.

By the way, our last episode was November 2025.

I just looked it up.

Do you remember what coding language it was? that you had to frame?

Back then, it was Quick Basic for DOS, or QBasic, they called it.

Yeah, QBasic.

And then when they came out with their DOS-based editor, it was pretty cool.

And then eventually I moved into Visual Basic for DOS and Visual Basic for Windows.

It's Beginning Programming for Dummies, 'cause, you know, that's me.

So I learned QBasic through that, which was a lot of fun.

It was a little, you know, it was a bit of an outdated environment at the time, right? You know, this was around like early 2000s.

QBasic was like, I don't know, late '80s, early '90s.

But it came with your Windows 98 CD, right? [chuckles] And then from there I, I was also exploring other things, like I actually wanted to, to learn how to set up a website, right? So I, I learned PHP and I, I set up an Apache server and, you know, I did like the whole LAMP stack and then I, you know, then there's like, oh, the LAMP stack, like learning Linux.

Learned C++ from there too, 'cause I didn't know that that was gonna be more over my head than I realized and, and it became more typical, right? You know, going through, you know, high school AP classes for like computer science and then, you know, the s- this, the typical college to industry pipeline there.

Especially with development.

I've taken one class in my entire life around development, and it was in high school, which was... a distressing number of years ago and was a QBasic class, and I hated it so much that I swore I'd never do it again.

And then I came crawling back a decade or two later.

Before I started blogging, I didn't go to school for, again, any of the stuff that I do.

Yeah, it's like my programming language.

Like the QBasic that runs my brain leaked out.

I think

you were referencing to yourself what you were doing in the notes document.

You'd end, end up just turning the computer off.

[laughs] Um, m- but a lot of time in QBasic.

Uh, I think QBasic ruined me.

I think it set me back.

Uh, it stunted my growth for years.

Oh, no. [laughs]

And, uh, I actually like...

I went back and, and started looking at, like, what was it about QBasic that messed me up? And I think when anyone, anyone who has, like, a surface level understanding of the Bas- Basic programming language knows that it's, like, 10 print Hello World, 20 go to 10.

Oh my God, I can't even remember what computer programs I was teaching, but it was the variety of computer programs that don't even exist anymore.

So QBasic or something, something from, from previous-

Um

... prehistorical ti-