Microsoft QuickBASIC was released in August 1985 and, while not the first BASIC which did not require line numbers (not even by Microsoft), it quickly became the practical reference of what was to be the second generation of BASIC. With ideas which were part of the ANSI standardization effort, but mostly influenced and bothered by the Pascal hype of the early 1980s, it was a structured BASIC, with proper subroutines and functions, modularization support, user-defined data types (UDTs) like Pascal's record and C's struct — and, leaving the line/screen editors behind for good, a remarkable, friendly IDE, starting from its 2.0 version.
Even more than its predecessor on the IBM-PC, GW-BASIC, QB still lives in many modern BASIC dialects in various degrees. FreeBASIC still maintains a -lang qb compatibility mode and QB64PE has the fundamental goal of becoming a legitimate and complete successor with added features. By its official lifetime until 1999, QuickBASIC had a number of versions, from stripped-down to souped-up ones, even for the Apple Macintosh.
Where it is/was used
Noteworthy characteristics
Environment and usage
Extensions
Curiosities
Influenced by
Microsoft BASIC for Macintosh became earlier, apparently in 1984
1), and may have been the first released Microsoft BASIC in which line numbers became optional
Amiga Microsoft BASIC was developed at around the same time of the Mac version, to which it was often compared and said to be very similar; its interface brought glimpses of what QB was to be
ANSI BASIC is
said to have been an influence: according to some, Microsoft had to prove a certain degree of adhesion to an official standard in order to be able to sell QuickBASIC to the United States government.
Influence for
FreeBASIC was born with a goal to be a free compiler fr QB code. It later evolved into a dialect of its own under strong C++ influence, but a "compatibility mode" with QB remains as an option.
Versions and successors
When QuickBASIC is mentioned unversioned at this site, it is a reference to its (final) version 4.5, probably the most successful one. Other notable versions were:
QBasic was a limited, linker-less, compiler-less version of QuickBASIC 4.5, which was distributed for free with MS-DOS 5 and 6, some versions of Windows 95 and 98 and as a command-line interpreter until Windows versions 2000 and Me. In spite of several cuts, it still supports most of the keywords of its bigger brother.
QB64PE is not a version, but an active free successor which, decades later, turned QB programs portable among multiple desktop platforms and added modernities to the language.
References