Celebrating 60 years of BASIC: open source projects release new versions
The BASIC programming language, created more than 60 years ago to teach novice programmers, is still alive and growing. In May 2024, the legendary language celebrated its 60th anniversary, and the developer community decided to celebrate this event in a special way. Several BASIC-related projects have released new versions of their software, showcasing the variety of modern dialects and implementations of the language. From Microsoft Small Basic extensions to retro ZX Spectrum emulators and QuickBASIC-compatible compilers – BASIC continues to inspire enthusiasts to create new tools and features for this historic programming language.
«Small Visual Basic 3.0» — it is the latest version of an enhanced version of Microsoft Small Basic developed by Mohamed Hamdi, whose tenth birthday The Reg celebrated in 2018. Small Visual Basic — This is an expanded version of the FOSS language and environment from Microsoft, which adds a graphical interface designer and language extensions for interacting with it. It is implemented entirely in Visual Basic.NET, making it exclusive to Windows platforms, and is available for free on the Visual Studio Marketplace.
Small Basic, and therefore Small Visual Basic, is not affiliated with the independent SmallBASIC project, which is entirely consistent with how BASIC has diversified over the years. SmallBASIC started on PalmOS, and SmallBASIC the 2004 release still supports PalmOS 5. Version 12.27 just arrived last week, and these days SmallBASIC supports x86 Linux, Raspberry Pi, Windows and many portable platforms.
A user of almost any ZX Spectrum emulator included with Debian will find that it comes pre-configured with the OpenSE BASIC firmware package. The image contains an open source ZX Spectrum replacement ROM based on OpenSE BASIC from Source Solutions.
While OpenSE BASIC can run on both real ZX Spectrum hardware and emulators, it has evolved into a larger project: an open source Z80-based computer called the Chloe 280SE. It started out as a project for an improved ZX Spectrum called ZX Spectrum SE, but has since evolved into something less compatible but more ambitious.
The latest version is SE Basic IV 4.2 and is part of the system software version 1.0 for the Chloe 280SE. SE Basic IV is closer to MS-BASIC than its Sinclair BASIC-oriented predecessor. Chloe 280SE is supported by several FOSS Sinclair emulators. This is an option in Cesar Hernandez Baño's ZEsarUX, and with manual configuration it can also work in Retro Virtual Machine. To run, you can load it onto the ZX-UNO FPGA and its variations, such as the ZX-TRES. Developer Andrew Owen supports this project on Patreon.
There are two main FOSS BASIC compilers that provide compatibility with Microsoft's classic QuickBASIC: the FreeBASIC compiler and QB64.
Disagreements among the QB64 project members led to the fork of QB64 Phoenix Edition, which is in active development on GitHub and has just released version 3.13.0. This looks like a fairly modest bug fix release for the big date, but since the parent project hasn't released anything since 2021, and QB64Official hasn't released anything since 2022, it can be said that at least one offshoot is releasing new versions.
BASIC — it is one of the oldest programming languages. Nowadays, it is practically not used for serious software development. However, BASIC still finds some use in areas such as: teaching programming (some educational institutions continue to use BASIC as the language for initial programming instruction due to its simple syntax); in some legacy embedded systems, such as older calculators, game consoles, and other resource-constrained devices; some enthusiasts continue to use BASIC for hobby and retro programming, recreating old games or programs; office programs such as Microsoft Office, which support BASIC-based macros (VBA).