BASIC-256

Introduction

BASIC-256 is an easy to use version of BASIC designed to teach anybody (especially middle and high-school students) the basics of computer programming. It uses traditional control structures like gosub, for/next, and goto, which helps kids easily see how program flow-control works. It has a built-in graphics mode which lets them draw pictures on screen in minutes, and a set of detailed, easy-to-follow tutorials that introduce programming concepts through fun exercises.

Check out "Why Johnny Can't Code," the article that inspired BASIC-256.

We welcome all tutorials and sample programs written for BASIC-256, as well as any feedback or ideas.

The original author may be contacted at drblast [at] users.sourceforge.net the current maintainer is available at renejm [at] users.sourceforge.net.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010, 10:59

0.9.6.42

Pushed out the 0.9.6.42 windows installer. Adds many new features to allow for permissions to be set to disable/enable settings, port i/o, and the system statement. Added new statements to save persistent settings, do direct parallel and other port i/o, MD5 check-sums, and added bitwise operators for and (&), or (|), and not (~).

Jim

more...

Friday, September 10, 2010, 20:32

0.9.6.35

Pushed out the 0.9.6.35 windows installer. Fixes a focus issue with the key statement and adds netaddress and kill statements.

Jim

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Friday, August 20, 2010, 18:42

0.9.6.32

Pushed out the 0.9.6.32 installer and source TGZ file a few days. It contains a whole lot of new stuff including database (SQLite3) manipulation commands and TCP/IP sockets. Check out the documentation or the new programs in the Examples folder.

Jim

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Monday, August 09, 2010, 15:39

0.9.6z and 0.9.6.27

New windows installer and LINUX source tar are at sourceforge. Added these revisions were error trapping statements onerror and offerror. It seems that comparison operators with strings were broken by a prior change and this has been corrected.

Windows build environment updated to QT4.6 and GNU c++ 4.4.

Jim

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Tuesday, August 03, 2010, 11:03

0.9.6y

Just rolled out the Windows Installer for 0.9.6y. New database functionality was added to allow for a SQLite database to be opened, SQL statements to be executed, and SELECT results be read. The documentation has been updated and examples will be coming soon.

Jim

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Sunday, August 01, 2010, 09:18

Show your BASIC-256 pride.

Check out the t-shirts and stickers at Cafepress. All proceeds (not much) will be used to pay for the web hosting and advertising. We will not be pocketing any of this.

The Swag-o-rama.

Jim

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Monday, July 26, 2010, 11:51

0.9.6w

Pushed 0.9.6w to svn yesterday and just released a Windows installer. This update includes many small changes including removing the size limit on the graphics output window, display of decimal numbers [decimal statement], and minor changes to the file and about messages.

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Sunday, July 25, 2010, 14:00

Art Gallery

The art gallery has been moved to the documentation WIKI available at http://doc.basic256.org.

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Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 12:05

0.9.6u

Pushed 0.9.6u to svn and a new Windows installer. Completed the wavwait command and made the text and graphics output windows floatable (big graphics!!).

jim

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Sunday, July 11, 2010, 21:40