BASIC Top 5

[John]

What is your list of the top 5 BASIC languages being offered and supported today?

[Ed Davis]

My top 5:

• FreeBASIC - my favorite, the one I use the most
• QB64 - 2nd most favorite, still use a good bit
• VBScript - have to support it at work
• Yabasic - not so much anymore
• BCX - not so much anymore.  Not sure if it is still supported

Others I've used, and still use on occasion, when I see something interesting written in them or when I'm testing something:

• Just Basic
• BaCon
• BBC BASIC for SDL
• SmallBasic (not the MS one)
• Oxygen Basic
• Chipmunk BASIC
• SpecBasic
• ScriptBasic

[John]

Welcome Ed to the AllBASIC.info forum!

[John]

My top 5 BASIC languages.

• ScriptBasic
• VB6
• Oxygen Basic
• BaCon
• FreeBasic

[Cybermonkey342]

My top 5

• FreeBASIC
• QB64
• BlitzMax NG (hope that counts...)
• SmallBASIC
• AllegroBASIC - well, if that also counts ...

[Gemino Smothers]

Thank you for accepting my registration to AllBasic forum.

That's a good question.

JustBasic - good for testing bits of code and ideas
YaBasic - also good for testing bits of code and ideas
FreeBasic - can compile qbasic programs without the same memory limits and on newer machines
Variants of GFA Basic - classic languages with several variants
IWBasic - contains important updates to the IBasic and EBasic legacy

I can hardly name five as newer software often doesn't suit my preferences.


I would also like to mention Blitz Basic and Emergence Basic as they are important to me, but not quite available or supported.

HobbyBasic from FASMforum deserves a very honorable mention. It's tiny, fast, and powerful

OxygenBasic looks amazing an I am looking towards trying it out.

[John]

Thanks for joining us here on the forum.

Oxygen Basic JIT ASM compiler is a nice alternative to FreeBasic for Windows.

[AIR]

• BCX/MBC because you can use C/C++ headers directly with no conversion
• Purebasic because it's cross platform
• Hotbasic - very underrated and mostly unknown, but after all the work I put in getting this ported to Linux of course I'm gonna add it.  Unfortunately no updates since 2012.
• Powerbasic - Personally don't care for it, but very powerful if you're good with WinAPI.

The last 3 are paid software, btw.

AIR.

[John]

I don't see PowerBasic ever being updated again. It was a Zale kludge of DOS / 16 & 32 bit Windows. Only he knew how to build a release and took it with him to the grave.

I wonder what ever happened to Jim the author of HotBasic?

[Gemino Smothers]

I plan to continue using 8/16/32 bit long well before I ever transition to 64.
Maybe I should give Power Basic a try some day.

[John]

That may work for DOS / Windows but Linux has standardized on 64 bit.