History

QBasic was intended as a replacement for GW-BASIC. It was based on the earlier QuickBASIC 4.5 compiler but without QuickBASIC's compiler and linker elements. Version 1.0 was shipped together with MS-DOS 5.0 and higher, as well as Windows 95, Windows NT 3.x, and Windows NT 4.0. IBM recompiled QBasic and included it in PC-DOS 5.x, as well as OS/2 2.0 onwards.^[7] eComStation, descended from OS/2 code, includes QBasic 1.0. QBasic 1.1 is included with MS-DOS 6.x, and, without EDIT, in Windows 95,Windows 98 and Windows Me. Starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft no longer includes QBasic with their operating systems.^[8](However, some localized versions of Windows 2000 and Windows XP still have it, and it can be given out as freeware.)^{[citation needed]}...

QBasic (as well as the built-in MS-DOS Editor) is backward compatible with DOS releases prior to 5.0 (down to at least DOS 3.20). However, if used on any 8088/8086 computers, or on some 80286 computers, the QBasic program may run very slowly, or perhaps not at all, due to its memory size. Until MS-DOS 7, MS-DOS Editor required QBasic: the "edit.com" program simply started QBasic in editor mode only, and this mode can also be entered by running QBASIC.EXE with the /EDITOR switch (i.e., command line "QBASIC /EDITOR".

John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz

(Founder of BASIC language)