Welcome to Issue 1, October

People keep saying that they hope Qbasic will never die, but in all honesty, it already is. The scene has been around for years, now, and the reasons for staying with Qbasic are getting fewer and fewer. The Scene is getting smaller rather than larger, and lacks the "Patriosm" that groups like the C64 community still ahve after all these years. The world has gotten more windows dependent, in fact, to my knowalge, Windows 2000 does not support DOS. The limitations of Qbasic are getting more dificult to deal with rather than less difficult despite many Librarys in the language. The place is getting more compeditive - nowadays people spend years making the be-all and end-all game which doesn't even compare to most modern games. Qbasic is powerless compared to modern languages, and C is the industry standard, which means that anybody who is working in Qbasic and looking to get a programming job hasn't a hope and is wasting their time programming. QuickPower, the Qbasic alternitive that Nekrophedious is working on, will probably mean the end for Qbasic.

Qbasic has never been more alive. Games like Mysterious Song and Shadow of Power compare equally to certain high budget commercial games. Programmers working for free do one of two things - not really bother or pour their heart and soul into a game. In Qbasic, the Latter is more common. And don't forget, at the end of the day, It's not the language that counts, it's the game it produced. "Partiosm" exists in the QMunnity, even if it is in smaller numbers than groups like the Commodore 64 Community. Windows Sucks, and people are only starting to realise that in number. Linux is the future, and Dos Emulators have no problems running in that. The limitations of Qbasic are only stopping the unintelligent and lazy from making classics - the only really major problem to the limitations posed by Qbasic are by certain backward programmers who believe it's unprofessional to use a Library. And people are certainly not wasting their time in Qbasic if they want a job in programming - If you've made and distributed a popular game, as usual, the language won't matter a damn.

That seems like a fair argument both ways, no? The above arguments are made up from things I've heard people say about Qbasic.

What do I think? I'm all for Qbasic, as I'm sure was clearly evident in those opinions! But enough of my opinion! I want yours. Next month, I'm going to put the best letters FOR and AGAINST Qbasic in the magizine, and you guys are going to vote for the winner,

until then,

Terry Cavanagh (terrycavanagh@eircom.net)