| >As for it being an informal or hobbyist language, if one begins by designing the proper data structures and adds the adequate functions to handle them, the resulting programs can be just as capable as those designed in any other language. Well, that is exactly my point. Basic has the reputation of being easy for beginners and hobbyists but properly written code in a recent OOP dialect of Basic doesn't look too different from code written in any object-oriented Algol-derived language. As such, it is probably about as easy/as hard to write. Which is what makes me suspect that Basic-the-language might not really be the secret sauce of environments like QB64 or Blitz3D. Other possible reasons they get the sort of following they do could be that 1. Those environments are easy to install and create your first project with. 2. They start you with an IDE, so compiling and running your first code is only a matter of pressing a single key or clicking a single button. 3. They ship a "fun-oriented" standard library. You don't have to install any addition packages or even import extra modules into your project to access subroutines for plotting, sprite graphics, sound, 3D, networking, etc. 4. They have high-quality, beginner-friendly documentation with plentiful examples. 5. They are fast, both the IDEs and the runtimes. 6. (A language-related one.) Somewhat surprisingly, they are more often that not statically typed and offer decent error messages. Perhaps compile-time errors are a better educational tool than runtime errors. I am not sure how important it is to have all of the above points but 1-3 seem crucial. |