- Step 1. Free Copy
QBasic is an open source programming language, available at no charge.
You can get it from several sources, including
here. Note that the Help
file is an old style DOS Help file and can only be accessed from within
the QBasic program itself.
- Step 2. Online Tutorials
The QBasic Help file is reasonably good. It covers all the features
but is not designed for beginners. You'll definitely want to read it,
but I recommend that beginners start with a short, online tutorial.
The benefit of such short tutorials is that you get exposed to the basics
without being overwhelmed by more detailed, complex learning sources.
I especially recommend reading more than one online tutorial. I've found
that each tutorial typical gives insight into some areas better than other
tutorials, making it worth my time to read several tutorials to get the
broader input.
There are a LOT of online tutorials. Here are my recommendations:
I suggest that you read all of these - front to back - and don't skip pages.
Type in all the examples and run them until you understand them.
Save what you type in for later use. These beginner tutorials have some
very basic code which you will use over and over again.
Once you've read the tutorials, read them again. You'll be surprised
at how much information you pick up with each re-reading. I found that
by the time I read it a third time, including printing it out and
using a high-lighter on the text for key sections, that I had pretty
much absorbed all that the tutorial had to offer.
- Step 3. Know Your Tools
Imagine hiring a carpenter and when you hand him a hammer he says
"What's this for?". You owe it to yourself and your employer to know
what QBasic tools are available and how to use them.
With QBasic, your primary tools are the built-in editor and the language
functions.
Despite it's apparent simplicity, you should spend the time to give the
built-in editor a thorough going over. It's more useful than it might
first appear. Even if you decide to use a 3rd party programmers editor,
you'll have to use the built-in editor to run your QBasic programs.
To help in sorting through the various QBasic functions, I've created a
QBasic Function Summary
that groups QBasic functions according to the type of task they can
perform. Grouping functions this way can really help you fix in
your mind what QBasic can do in each group.
- Step 4. Online Scripts
I've already mentioned that you should type in every line of whichever
tutorial or books you chose to use in learning QBasic. I suggest
that you also go download some short scripts from some of the online
sites which offer free scripts. Go through each of the samples line
by line. Look for lines of code that you will be able to re-use in
your own scripts.
I suggest my own snippets as a good
way to start. When picking out scripts, try to get annotated code to
help you understand what the author of the script intended.
- Step 4. QBasic FAQs
There are about a half dozen QBasic FAQs out there. I suggest that
you read them all, but not until you've gone through some of
the tutorials and have a handle of QBasic's capabilities. I've
gone through all the FAQs I can find and have found that they
have good information but are not focussed on the needs of
beginning programmers.
The more you know about QBasic before you read the FAQs, the more you'll
get from the FAQs. Unfortunately there is no one single FAQ these days,
nor are all of them kept current.
- Step 5. Books
Online tutorials can only take you so far. They're too short to
provide the in-depth discussion that you can find in books. Books
not only provide greater depth of coverage, but they provide the
ability to take the materials with you - allowing you to read and
learn wherever you are - on the road, on a plane, or waiting in
the doctor's office.
I suggest starting with the following book. You should be able to
find it at a used book store, or online at Amazon.com.
If you want additional suggestions, take a look at my
QBasic Books page.
- Step 6. QBasic Documentation
QBasic comes a help file. I suggest that you literally walk
through the entire set of help pages, one at a time, paying
especially close attention to the source code examples.
Read it a second time. As I've mentioned before, you'll be
amazed at what you pick up on the second pass, that escaped
your attention the first time through.
