QBasic 64: Print Statement

Printing is a process of communicating information and ideas via output, usually text, numbers, images and data.

In southwestern France during World War II, four teenage boys and their dog Robot were seeking treasure when they stumbled upon a cave containing prehistoric painting on the wall in a series of caves.  These painting are believed to be about 18,000 years old. 

This is one of the earliest forms of “printing” in human history.  If you dare, take the virtual tour by clicking on the link below:

Cavepeople Art

With verbal language came written language.  Written language used paper to communicate ideas and knowledge for thousands of years but books were laboriously copied by hand.  Human art such as painitings were a visual form of sharing ideas and information. In the 15^th Century, Johannes Gutenberg created a printing press with movable type and initiated a revolution in the sharing of information.

In the 1800’s, typewriters were being invented.  The organization of the keyboard of your laptop are a vestige of the typewriter.  The letters are organized so that the hammers of the letters of the typewriter would not jam into each other while typing.



In the 1900’s, teletype machines were being invented.  You might recognized a teletype machine as a forerunner of computer printers.  Below is a video of a teletype machine posted by westernelectric:

In the 1980’s, microcomputers with word processing software and early matrix printers began to replace typewriters which are rare to see today.  The invention of television and computer monitors began to share information and data on screens.  More and more information is not being printed out on paper but rather stored in data files such as Portable Document Format (PDF) and other storage mediums.  We are approaching the point where all the books, papers, and images humans ever created can be stored on a single computer chip.

Print has come a long way. You are now ready to write you first computer program.  The syntax for the PRINT statement in QBasic64 is:

Print expression-list

Print “write something obnoxious”.   For example: Print “Hello Morons!”

This will display your message on the display screen of your laptop when you run and execute this one line program.