FreeBASIC

FreeBASIC logo.

FreeBASIC is a free and open source BASIC computer programming language written in C++ by Andre Victor in 2004. The language was originally designed to be a modern implementation of QuickBASIC, and can even compile most QuickBASIC programs, but it also greatly expands the original language to take advantage of modern computer architecture. The language can compile 32 or 64-bit programs for Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD as well as 32-bit programs for MS-DOS.

New features include:

• The ability to link to C and C++ libraries.
• Multi-threading support.
• Many new variable types including pointers, unsigned numeric types, 64-bit integers, wide-strings, date/time, and several more.

FreeBASIC does have several issues like its inability to properly trap when you accidentally go beyond the bounds of an array or overflow a numeric value. It also have very poor Windows integration, and nearly everything you would want to do to interact with Windows, from making forms to getting the path of current user's Documents folder, requires cryptic Windows API calls.

Personal

I use FreeBASIC when I want to quickly prototype an idea or make a simple command line program because development is so much faster than most other languages.

Media

• 

  A Beginner's Guide to FreeBasic.

Links

   

• freebasic.net/wiki - FreeBASIC Manual Wiki.
• fbide.freebasic.net - FreeBASIC IDE.
• github.com/PaulSquires/WinFBE - FreeBASIC Editor for Windows.
• documentation.help/FreeBASIC - Online documentation.