The breaking point for me was when I was trying to code an RTS, and I was writing ASM for both graphics and EMS/XMS, and trying to get arrays of TYPEs to substitute for objects. Then I knew it was time to stop finding excuses to cling to QB
I've been reminiscing about it though, since I've been writing some 65816 ASM recently (SNES ROM hacking), and ASM always makes me think of QBASIC
(Well, QuickBasic 4.5 was our tool of choice, but if you were part of the scene you know it's the same thing even though it isn't, and that that line of argument is tired)
Also, this thread is pretty funny:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/759nl/share_qbasic_or_it_dies/
I want to see the source code to this server. It sounds incredible. While I was in the QB scene I never did see anyone get networking worked out (The hack was always an VB Winsock app, which didn't even work)
Quote:
Several years ago, a small food services company contacted me about maintaining some web apps for them. When I got to their premises, they showed me an old 486 running MS-DOS 6.22. Years back somebody had hacked them up a web server written in QuickBASIC and assembly. Their various pages were generated by a number of QuickBASIC subroutines, even accessing a custom database format.
It was pretty impressive to see that whoever developed this had hacked together a rudimentary TCP/IP stack and networking infrastructure in assembly and QuickBASIC. The fact that this was a production server accessed by a fair number of customers was even more surprising.
Given the obtuse nature of the system, and the questionable hardware, I suggested a rewrite using Python CGI scripts. So after a month or so of work, they were finally using a more modern setup. But their original system ranks among one of the most unique web sites I've ever worked with.
It was pretty impressive to see that whoever developed this had hacked together a rudimentary TCP/IP stack and networking infrastructure in assembly and QuickBASIC. The fact that this was a production server accessed by a fair number of customers was even more surprising.
Given the obtuse nature of the system, and the questionable hardware, I suggested a rewrite using Python CGI scripts. So after a month or so of work, they were finally using a more modern setup. But their original system ranks among one of the most unique web sites I've ever worked with.
That sounds incredible. It's tragic that that source code is undoubtedly lost
