When the pandemic started, I put QuickBASIC in front of my kids and could see them enjoy toying with writing some simple programs. Since then, I've been working on a side project to build a similar experience using modern technologies, with the goal of having a tool to teach the foundations of programming to (my own) kids.
This is what EndBASIC is: is a retro-looking, BASIC interpreter with DOS-like features -- built for the web. The environment is designed to be minimalist in an attempt to reproduce the computing experience of the 1980s where the computers were simpler to understand overall and simpler to program. The interpreter runs on the browser for simplicity, although it can also be installed natively on multiple platforms.
Anyhow... I can't say I have reached that original goal of mine yet, but I've been having a lot of fun building this project. As some of you put it before in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25884859, this might be my "forever project". In fact, this has been a good playground to continue practicing Rust and to recently get into deploying a cloud service.
I'll leave you with the project's new, shiny homepage page at:
and my latest blog post at:
https://jmmv.dev/2021/07/endbasic-0.7.html
that explains what's new in the latest release published this weekend. As for what's coming next... graphics support could be a great feature :) but I'm also open to ideas.
Thanks for taking a look!