FreeBASIC

FreeBASIC is a free and open source BASIC computer programming language designed 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 feature set 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, and several more.

I use FreeBASIC when I want to quickly test an idea or make a simple command line program for Windows because development is so much faster than most other languages. The only thing I don't like about FreeBASIC is its inability to properly trap when you accidentally go beyond the bounds of an array or overflow a numeric value.

Links

   

• freebasic.net/wiki - FreeBASIC Manual Wiki.
• fbide.freebasic.net - FreeBASIC IDE.