Not that long ago I was an Application Developer or “Programmer”, and couldn’t see a career in computers outside of programming. Well, I no longer develop software, but seem to spend all day “hands on” with a range of computers. As a substitute for programming, I like to “play” with various programming languages and compilers after hours.

Since this is more of a hobby I tend to avoid expensive compilers. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition would be great, as it includes Visual Basic, Visual C# (C# is pronounced C Sharp, not C pound nor C hash), Visual C++ and ASP.Net. VS 2008 can build applications for Windows, the Web and Windows Mobile devices. Apart from the fact that using Visual Studio is too much like work, it would also blow my budget.

With my background in Visual Studio and most recently Visual Basic, I tend to look for Basic compilers. Surprising enough there are a number of them out there, including some very good free ones and some rather average expensive ones.

A good place to find free Basic compilers is at thefreecountry.com’s “Free BASIC Compilers and Interpreters“.

One of the first free Basic compilers I played with was the BCX BASIC Compiler. BCX is a Basic to C converter, and the package includes a free C Compiler, which can be replaced by one of a handful of C compilers (some of them mentioned on thefreecountry.com’s list of “Free C/C++ Compilers“). It is an interesting concept, and BCX is constantly being improved. It is also a way for a Basic programmer to learn C.

Posted on August 3rd, 2008 by mervyn