[Year 12 Its] QBASIC add-ins WAS Re: Naming Conventions

[Bricks J. Winzer]

>>I had a feeling that would be the case :) I remember QBASIC from DOS
>>5.0 (and DOS 6.0 but not 6.2)... had it been in DOS 6.2 I think more
>>people would remember the Snake game from QBASIC and not from Nokia
>>:)

> And who can forget the gorilla banana throwing game that also came
> with QBASIC! A far more fun way of learning about trajectories and
> physics that the usual methods we did then (ie write the formula and
> example off the board and do several examples of balls in flight...)

Oh yes the gorillas were awesome! :)  I was sad that in DOS 6.0 they'd
been removed.  I've seen similar games - Microsoft's BangBang
(cannons), and some silly Flash version using stick-figure archers
(that my Year 9s played last year when they thought I wasn't looking,
and continued to do so whilst I was).  Not a patch on the gorillas.

When at Ringwood SC on my last teaching round in late 2003 I was
teaching a programming class. Their teacher (my supervisor) actually
taught them QBasic first, so they understood the nature of Subs (I
guess, without having to worry about controls). Quite a novel idea, I
thought.

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B.J. Winzer
St Columba's College
Essendon