QBasic
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 7 programming environments by recommenders
Recommended as a self-contained, friendly BASIC programming environment with excellent built-in help, and as a first language for learning. Critics mainly note that the code it produced was often poor.
Recommended as a self-contained, friendly BASIC programming environment with excellent built-in help, and as a first language for learning. Critics mainly note that the code it produced was often poor.
30 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 27
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 27 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Nostalgic memories from childhood use
“Basic and Qbasic represent a part of computer culture that has been lost a little bit”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory” “It was just wonderful. I owe so much to that thoughtful feature as a child.”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “A browser-native classic Visual Basic VB6 IDE” “As one of those kids who spent the early 90s in QBasic, thank you!”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory” - Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “"Plain text has been around for decades and it's here to stay." – Unsung”
- Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Show HN: Trust – Coding Rust like it's 1989”
- Comment from 21 Dec 2025 on Hacker News
- Comment from 24 May 2026 in “Childhood Computing”
Excellent built-in help and documentation
“Retrocomputing with something like QBASIC is an obvious example, since it comes with a complete hypertext manual”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Writerdeck.org” “relatively friendly IDE that had built‑in help for every single command”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory” “QBasic's bultin help/documentation was good enough for me”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “What even is an OS now?” - Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: How did you learn to code?”
- Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “A browser-native classic Visual Basic VB6 IDE”
- Comment from 13 May 2026 in “What if there was no BASIC in EndBASIC? – by Julio Merino”
Educational first language for learning
“how amazing QBASIC was as an IDE, a programming language, and perhaps most importantly as an educational tool”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “What even is an OS now?” “Reverse engineering how they worked gave a lot of the core concepts (variables, loops, procedures)”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: How did you learn to code?” “That was my first programming language, taught in 10th grade intro to programming. I loved it!”
Comment from 9 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: How did you learn to code?” - Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Cartoon Network Flash Games”
Self-contained, no-install environment
“The old editor for DOS 6.22 was actually provided by qbasic.exe, which had the editor and a full BASIC interpreter packed in 250kB.”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown” “One magic keystroke or one command and you were in a dev environment that matched everyone else's.”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us” “It's a completely self-contained sandbox of possibilities.”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory” - Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “QBasic in the Browser”
Other programming environments people recommend
The four most recommended other programming environments, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HyperCard | 62 | 5 | 93% | 11 | — | Approved |
| QBasicThis page | 27 | 3 | 90% | 11 | — | Approved |
| QuickBASIC | 8 | 0 | 100% | 8 | — | — |
| Folk Computer | 6 | 2 | 75% | 6 | — | — |
| Glamorous Toolkit | 6 | 1 | 86% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
33 of the 38 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“how convenient and complete QBASIC's help feature was”
“No install or sign-up needed.”
“It was just wonderful. I owe so much to that thoughtful feature as a child.”
“QBasic which came bundled for free with MS DOS 5.0”
“how amazing QBASIC was as an IDE, a programming language, and perhaps most importantly as an educational tool”
“QBasic's bultin help/documentation was good enough for me”
“fun graphics programming when compared to qbasic”
“everything you could do with QBASIC, you can do with an HTML file”
“One magic keystroke or one command and you were in a dev environment that matched everyone else's.”
“but the run screen does not”
“doesn’t trigger the keyboard on mobile”
“the resulting QBasic code was pretty awful in retrospect”
“bouncing off of tools like QBASIC that required it”
“It's a completely self-contained sandbox of possibilities.”
“Basic and Qbasic represent a part of computer culture that has been lost a little bit”
“relatively friendly IDE that had built‑in help for every single command”
“As one of those kids who spent the early 90s in QBasic, thank you!”
“it blew up on almost all of them”
“Very fun (I won my first game!)”
“Then on the PC it was QBasic and Turbo Pascal, and later Perl.”
“QBasic was so much faster and implemented differently.”
“You really only had QBASIC which was great”
“What made it particular good was the F1 help.”
“I remember being introduced to QBASIC as a kid”
“The blue CRT glow of Turbo C++ / QBasic 4.5 IDE at 12 AM”
“This is the stuff I grew up with: QBASIC and EDIT.COM for example.”
“The old editor for DOS 6.22 was actually provided by qbasic.exe, which had the editor and a full BASIC interpreter packed in 250kB.”
“QuickBasic/QBasic/edit.com darkish blue background and grey text was just damn comfortable”
“That was my first programming language, taught in 10th grade intro to programming. I loved it!”
“Reverse engineering how they worked gave a lot of the core concepts (variables, loops, procedures)”
“MS QBasic had fantastic in built help, with examples.”
“QBasic still brings that feeling back for me.”
“Retrocomputing with something like QBASIC is an obvious example, since it comes with a complete hypertext manual”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.