What BASIC intepreters are available?

Question

Was asked by a new Ubuntu user - who also wants to learn about programming - what he could use to run BASIC code. He was working through a BASIC book before trying out Ubuntu, and he'd like to continue without having to switch back to Windows.

It looks like there are a few BASIC packages in the standard repositories, as well as projects like Mono which may include some kind of BASIC support.

What would be a good recommendation from the standard repositories - or from a deb package - for someone learning the basics of BASIC and new to Ubuntu?

Solution 1

Searching apt reveals

• basic256 - educational BASIC programming environment for children
• yabasic - Yet Another BASIC interpreter

basic256 seems it might be a little better suited for the user, but I'm not sure how closely that dialect will match whatever is in his programming book, which might be frustrating.

Homepage here - http://www.basic256.org/index_en

yabasic seems closer to standard BASIC, but I really have no first-hand experience with either.

Good luck.

Solution 2

Gambas is the nearest equivalent to Visual Basic (It is quite geared towards desktop apps), so would be good if your friend was using Visual Basic.

Gambas is a free development environment based on a Basic interpreter with object extensions, a bit like Visual Basic™ (but it is NOT a clone !). Read the introduction for more information.

With Gambas, you can quickly design your program GUI with Qt or GTK+, access MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, ODBC and SQLite databases, pilot KDE applications with DCOP, translate your program into any language, create network applications easily, make 3D OpenGL applications, make CGI web applications, and so on...

Solution 3

If he is more interested in making games, sdlBasic would be a better option:

sdlBasic is a small, efficient and multiplatform basic interpreter aimed to game creation using the power of SDL library, it was inspired by the old and glorious AMOS.

Solution 4

why not take look at this small but effective interpreter: my-basic written in C. It's portable. I consider it a good start for either playing a little BASIC or learning how to write a BASIC interpreter in C.

Solution 5

I still write some small stuff in QB64. But I'm mostly concerned with data and data manipulation and not graphics. Just finished a tiny program to convert info from one accounting package to another one. Took me a week to write it. Running the program successfully converted 6 years of info before my coffee got cold.

Small, compact, but very powerful. Only screen display was showing the file conversions taking place as well as a 'Start' screen and a 'Conversion Successful' completion screen.

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Comments

[Admin]

That highly depends on which BASIC dialect he's learning.

[Admin]

The recommendations for other languages is really outside of the scope of this site.

[Admin]

I have removed them. Programming questions should be asked on stack overflow. The rest of the question is OK because it is concerning an Ubuntu package.

[Admin]

@dv3500ea I was saying I didn't want other language recommendations. Since it's about a language, I wanted to be clear I didn't want 'he should learn [language] instead' answers. So I'm not sure why you edited that out, then said the same thing in the comments.

[Admin]

I'm sorry, I must have read it incorrectly. I actually thought you meant that you did want recommendations for other languages ... my bad.

[Admin]

I know you specifically asked to avoid language recommendations, but there is a huge improvement to learning programming with a language such as Python compared to Basic. Your friend should consider other languages—in addition to, not necessarily instead of.

[Admin]

@Roger, Yeah, I know, and I'll probably recommend something like that. Right now I just wanted to tell him how he can continue what he was learning with Ubuntu.

[bayindirh]

Was there really a need to put this in a separate answer rather than include it in your first answer?

[dv3500ea]

So that people can vote between the separate basics to give an indication of which is most suitable.

[Tim Lytle]

Not in the repositories (unless it's in 10.10), but there is a deb package.

[Rinzwind]

On askubuntu we use the words Windows and Microsoft. No need for the usage of a $ :)

[jwzumwalt]

FYI-I have not been able to get Gambas to work with several versions of xubunta.

[jwzumwalt]

FYI-I have attempted FreeBasic on several versions of xubunta and none work. The installation instructions are VERY distro specific and require about 20 support pkgs. After installing these, it still does not work for me.