I'm the guy from this topic.
I also asked in this place if the Quickbasic download is legal,
which was confirmed by some of you.
But after some searching I found out it is typically abandonware,
that is software that is no longer sold or upgraded but is not yet in the public domain (that is, expired copyrights.)
It's copyrights aren't expired, so by the law it's illegal.
But the abandonware thought is that it's morally legal anyway,
because if it's not spread as if it's freeware, it's very hard to get a copy because the stuff isn't sold anymore.
(Check this topic on FarisLaw.)
I don't support that so I've stopped using QuickBasic.
Because I'm a Christian I want to keep the (governmental) law - that's in Romans 13 if someone would want to start such discussions.
Off course I didn't like having to stop using QuickBasic because I got quite good at it, but I did stop, and now I found something that I'd call better.
Profan² is a language developed somewhere in Win3.x time,
and it used to be shareware.
The developer is German and it seems he is not rather good in English.
There used to be only a German version but it was translated.
According to its website the English version wasn't popular and only 20 copies were sold in the US. Now Profan² 3.3 (the Win3.x version) is freeware.
Don't worry, the fact that it's a Win3.x version only means it's 16-bits.
You can still execute it on your newer Windows, although I suspect WinXP from converting 16 to 32-bits (not sure) because it took kind of long when I wanted to open a 16-bit program ('LockIt' by Kevin LaFata).
I haven't tested any other 16-bit programs since I don't have XP myself.
On my 98SE machine it runs fine and the same with the created programs.
It is said to have worked with OS/2 Warp.
On its website (www.profan.de) you can download Profan² for free.
In the menu, click on English.
The newer versions are still shareware and I have no idea how much they cost, but I expect a lot of them.
Too bad there's no real English version, only some weird translation stuff.
If there was a directly buyable English version cheaper than €25 (about $25), I'd probably buy it.
Unzipped it's about 1,22MB so space shouldn't be a problem.
The language itself looks a bit like Basic.
Here's one option for "hello world":
PRINT "Hello world!"
WAITINPUT
END
WAITINPUT waits for a keypress or a mouseclick, the rest should be clear.
Now another option, using popup screens:
MESSAGEBOX "Hello world!","Title",0
END
The first parameter is the text, the second the title, the third the box-type.
I already wrote two small programs, here a brief description of them.
The downloads are in PRC, they're compiled but not linked with EXE.
It is possible to make them stand-alone EXE's, but then the Profan² execution engine will be included and it's better to just download Profan².
Off course this is a trick of me to make you download the thing
RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR
A typical program to learn a new language better after you did the "hello world" stuff.
You enter a number (M) and the program generates a random number between 0 and M (can also be M).
There also is the AGAIN function that uses the previously entered M to make another random number.
These things were all in version 1.0, but there's more.
FILL is like AGAIN but it goes on until the window is filled.
And in the new CONFIG menu you can edit the maximum M (at least 1, at most 65534), change hotkeys, and pausetimes.
These pausetimes wait for a while before another generation can be executed because the computer speed nowadays is so fast that things go wrong if you don't slow it down.
But in the CONFIG menu the pausetimes can be redefined and also disabled (set to 0) so you can see what happens.
Version 1.1 currently contains about 444 lines and works properly, but I'm still building in more functions.
Download (PRC, executable with Profan²)
Want old and/or Dutch versions? Email me.
CHARMAKER (C-M)
A very small program that shows which character corresponds to a number you enter. It uses @Chr$, a function that according to the reference shows the character corresponding with its ANSI code.
There are 3 different fonts and you can also choose to use the Windows popup function (see MESSAGEBOX in the hello world example).
I have just written this thing and am going to try to add some more features in v1.1. Current version 1.0 is about 130 lines and seems to work fine.
Download (PRC, executable with Profan²)
Want the Dutch version? Email me.
I hope you're going to try it
If you have good (or bad) experiences, email me.
P.S. Profan² CAN connect with SQL servers and do things! It uses OBCD.DLL and has the commands:
SQLDone (disconnect)
SQLExec (send command)
SQLSetNull (I'm not sure, but I think it's to make results variable compatible if you get a empty result)
SQLSetDel (set the separator character to get the results in a variable)
These are the functions:
@SQLInit (connect)
@SQLExec (send command)
And the system variable:
&SQLCount (1 means error, otherwise number of data sets processed by last command)
Now that's nice :P