QuickBasic is a compiled variant of the BasicLanguage developed and sold by Microsoft in the 1980s. While it originally strayed very little from its line-number BASIC roots. Later versions added line labels in place of line numbers, and then Pascal-like subroutines and functions.

Quick Basic was the precursor to VisualBasic, though Visual Basic was really a different language. While they shared similar characteristics, they were not at all source code compatible.

The GnuProject FreeBasic models itself after QuickBasic.

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The best thing about Quick Basic, and the worst thing about VisualBasicClassic, was that the former came free-as-in-beer with the OS and the latter cost. Quick Basic was sort of the last stronghold of the microcomputer BASIC-hacking community; which was sort of retarded in its own way, but at least it was widespread hacking of some kind.

When I was in high school, all of our programming was done in Quick Basic. Which is kind of sad, but I wonder what they use now?

''I graduated in 1999. The introductory programming class I had in 1995-96, was in BasicLanguage. The more advanced was in PascalLanguage, later replaced in CeePlusPlus. But intro class stayed with Basic. The more computer-literate people in my class used QBasic instead of ye olde Basic. Amazing! Using a SEPARATE SCREEN for subroutines!''

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Quick Basic is a compiler from Microsoft for the BASIC programming language. Microsoft included QBasic freely in MS-DOS 5 and later versions. The difference between Quick Basic and QBasic is that Quick Basic enabled the programmer to generate standalone EXE files, while QBasic didn't - it loaded the .BAS file and compiled it at runtime. 

A very powerful procedural language during the late 80s and early 90s, lost much of it's popularity with the advent of Windows 3.1 and the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Visual Basic was created for the new programming paradigm, and it's use is quite different. There was also a version of Visual Basic that ran under DOS (and not Windows) called Visual Basic for DOS. 

You can still find many BAS programs to run even nowadays, and several compilers compatible with the original Quick Basic.

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See also: TurboPascal TurboBasic
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CategoryProgrammingLanguage