Chapter 5: Getting Your Hands on a Real Language: Liberty BASIC

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still run QBASIC in most versions of Windows (such as Windows 98 but not Windows 2000), people have been screaming for a Windows-based version of BASIC that they can use to teach themselves programming.

Because Microsoft has no intention of creating a Windows-based version of QBASIC, the next alternative is to use Liberty BASIC. You can not only

write BASIC programs in Liberty BASIC on any computer that runs Microsoft Windows, but you can also create real, honest-to-goodness Windows applications using Liberty BASIC that you can sell or give away as well.

If you pay for the full version of Liberty BASIC, you can create real Windows programs that you can sell to others. The shareware version of Liberty BASIC (which comes with this book) allows you to write programs, but won’t allow you to compile and distribute them to others.

You can start using Liberty BASIC today

Liberty BASIC comes with this book, so everyone reading this book can start using it right away (unless, of course, you’re not using Windows). That makes Liberty BASIC a natural learning tool to complement this book.

If trying to understand certain programming concepts confuses you, you can quickly type a sample Liberty BASIC program and see for yourself exactly how certain programming features work. By combining theory with hands-on experience, this book and Liberty BASIC can help you pick up computer programming in no time.

Installing Liberty BASIC

To install Liberty BASIC by using the CD that comes with this book, refer to the installation instructions in the Appendix.

Because software changes so rapidly, a newer version of Liberty BASIC may be available by the time you read this book. If you download a newer version from the Liberty BASIC Web site (at www.libertybasic.com), you may need to go through some extra steps to install Liberty BASIC on your computer.

If you download Liberty BASIC from the Liberty BASIC Web site, the file is compressed in a self-extracting EXE file. To decompress this file, you need to download and save this file somewhere on your hard disk, and then doubleclick on the Liberty Basic EXE file (which has a cryptic name such as lb400win. exe). When you double-click on the Liberty Basic EXE file, the Liberty Basic installation program guides you, step-by-step, into installing Liberty Basic on your computer.