DOS QBASIC and WIN VB6 alternatives in Linux

[A. Jorge Garcia]

Anyone out there code in QBASIC or Visual BASIC 6 anymore? Well, I'm forced to use M$ WINDOZE only because of these too IDEs. If I could find similar apps in KNOPPIX in particular or Linux in general, I could finally scrap Billy Boy's OS!

I'm looking for as similar as possible alternatives in Linux. I've heard that yabasic is pretty close to QBASIC and HBASIC is sort of like VB6. My students use this in a very introductory course about programming, so they're not ready for anything like .NET yet which is totally OOP(Object Oriented Prohramming - creating new objects and modifying existing ones), just VB6 which is OBP(Object Based Programming - using existing objects).

Any comments would be appreciated!

TIA,

[mabhatter]

Depending on the ages your dealing with, you could just scrap the basic all together!

The basic LAMP [Linux, Apache, MySql, & PHP (or Perl)] web server isn't really that hard to learn! With a little coaxing Knoppix does that right off the CD too. (It's also fully available under windows too, if you're so inclined.)

Start with basic shell operations. Then move to HTML in a browser for a while. Maybe add Javascript. Add features the hard way, then introduce the next program after the project becomes too huge for the current system. Once you have 20-30 web pages in a directory, introduce Apache to host them. Build a collection, then introduce PHP to streamline things. Once the PHP has too many files to track, introduce Databases and MySQL. You might stop for other things along the way too. [photo editing, sound, page layout, Googling, etc that tie into building pages]

The only issue with Linux is that everything is different from what you're used to. I know it sounds ambitous, but from my POV you might as well just toss the students in the pool and then teach um to swim. Most programming is multi-program...multi-system...multi-language so they might as well learn early! The key would be to set a reasonable goal for each week and let them work together to acomplish it.

There's lots of books to pull from for improving your knowladge and using as texts. O'reily has lots of good ones and the format is fairly consistant from title to title.

The other advantage of the LAMP path is that you could arrange for some inside or outside hosting! The students would get kicks out of actually doing something, and be learning really cool tools. If you're in a school situation, you may have issues with grading--programming at the entry level is hard to "grade". Yes, there's always quizing over specific points, but more important are concepts--you'll never learn all the keywords, most programmers just look up stuff as needed because things change so quickly!

One thing: Don't underestimate them! If they're over 12, they'll probably learn it faster than you. What they can't "just figure out", is good practice, putting pieces together, and general programming "wisdom". Done right it's a chance to really educate and not just teach.

[rickenbacherus]

Anyone out there code in QBASIC or Visual BASIC 6 anymore? Well, I'm forced to use M$ WINDOZE only because of these too IDEs. If I could find similar apps in KNOPPIX in particular or Linux in general, I could finally scrap Billy Boy's OS!

Try this http://www.janus-software.com/

[garyng]

Most programming is multi-program...multi-system...multi-language so they might as well learn early! The key would be to set a reasonable goal for each week and let them work together to acomplish it.

How true

[A. Jorge Garcia]

Bump!!!

BTW, just an update. I'm starting to use yabasic for linux instead of IBM BASICA. Also, I'm going to try out janus software's phoenix for linux instead of MS VBASIC! Both are available via apt-get.

Thanx for the help guys.

Regards,
AJG