Software Development

875 Articles

QT6 Brings BASIC To The Web Browser, Or Your Computer

July 19, 2026 by 13 Comments

In the old days, you either swore by BASIC or you swore at it — but just about everybody got their start on the educational language. Nowadays, the kids are learning Python, but there’s a case to be made for BASIC — either for education, or just for nostalgic fun. BASIC-256 fills that niche, and now that it’s being ported to the oh-so-portable QT6 by [UglyMike], there’s even a webAssembly version that will let you run BASIC in your browser.

This version of BASIC is based on KidBASIC, which was aimed at the educational market. It’s got some handy-dandy graphics routines, 64-bit variables, and other quality-of-life features you can find in the docs. The new port is multi-platform, though the MacOS version has only been compiled for Apple Silicon — less of an issue than it used to be — and the web version naturally can’t get access to hardware for, e.g., serial ports, so it is somewhat more limited than a full install. There’s a second ARM build for Raspberry Pi along with the ubiquitous x86, but the project is open source, so if you really want to run this on an UltraSPARC system, you are welcome to compile it there. That said, this is a beta version, and the dev is actively looking for problems — so give it a go and let them know.

This isn’t the only open source BASIC out there — even Microsoft released their source code, at least for the 6502.

Thanks to [UglyMike] for the tip!

Write 2D And 3D Games In Modern MoonBASIC

July 18, 2026 by 9 Comments

One of the major strengths of the BASIC programming languages has always been their no-fuss setup and rich set of commands for operations that would take considerably more work in a bare-bones language like C. MoonBASIC continues this legacy with a BASIC variant optimized for both 2D and 3D game development.

Included in the package are Raylib, Box2D, and Jolt, whose functionality is exposed via over 4,200 commands in their respective namespaces. You can also download a whole IDE package based around VS Code, use it on the command line, or add it to an existing VS Code installation.

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Calculator UI Is More Complex Than You Might Think

July 18, 2026 by 27 Comments

Calculators are so ubiquitous and so familiar that they are easy to take for granted in many different ways. [lcamtuf] points out one that has probably never occurred to many of us: the user interface for a calculator is an unexpectedly complex thing.

The internal logic to support sequential inputs and multiple operators in a way that feels intuitive is a complex thing.

Resolving something like 1 + 2 = is pretty straightforward but complexity compounds rapidly after that, with numerous special cases. Let’s imagine one decides to program a simple calculator UI as a weekend project. The development process might look a little like this:

  1. User types in 1 + 2 = and the calculator displays 3. What happens if the user immediately presses -?
  2. No problem, just consider the result of the previous operation as an already-there input. So we’ll have 3 - for this next operation, and wait for more.
  3. Unless we should have treated that - as a negative sign for whatever number is coming next, making it a negative number? No, ignore that. Just treat whatever results from pressing equals as a pre-typed input.
  4. Unless the user hits a number. Because if they hit 2 (for example) then we’ll have a 32 and not a 2 which they probably, definitely don’t expect. So that’s a special case and we should insert a clear if that happens.
  5. Oh, better clear if the user enters a decimal, too.
  6. I’m going to need a coffee…

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine trying to figure all this out for the very first time, without the benefits of habit and history to fall back on.

The fact is that supporting the apparently trivial behavior of a simple calculator requires an underlying complex state machine that deals with all kinds of special cases in order to make the UI feel intuitive. And that’s just for a basic four-function calculator; we haven’t even touched on how special keys like % should behave.

We know [lcamtuf] speaks from experience, not just because of their deep knowledge of calculator history but because they rolled their own calculator that uses voltmeters as digit displays and there’s nothing like actually implementing something to make one appreciate it.

Google Earth Desktop Client To Be Retired In 2027

July 16, 2026 by 46 Comments

Come next year, those looking to explore the globe virtually via Google Earth will have to do so on their smartphone or from within their browser, as the search giant has decided to discontinue the service’s desktop client in June 2027.

The good news is, the lights won’t be going out immediately. According to a post made on Google Earth’s official support community by Community Manager [Aamir F.], the June cutoff date applies to new downloads, but nothing is changing on the backend, so existing installs will continue to work.

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UDP Broadcasting And The Joys Of IPv4 Subnetting

July 14, 2026 by 36 Comments

In the previous installment on UDP broadcasting and service discovery, the basics of both were explored, including an implementation in the form of NyanSD and its protocol. Contained in the comment section was a very good demonstration of why one of the most exciting aspects of software development is the opportunity to share your latest creations with other people. This being the ability to get solid feedback on all the points – including any potential boneheaded omissions – that you really should address, whether intentional or accidental.

The most pertinent point raised was definitely that of broadcast addresses and IPv4 subnets, with the latter topic especially being something that the sysadmins at the office would talk about all the time, but which us software developers were always happy to ignore as something that didn’t concern us. Turns out the joke was on me and everyone else – like our esteemed readers – who thought that they could escape the fascinating world of subnets, as today we’ll take an in-depth look at what subnets are and how they are relevant to the world of UDP network discovery.

I somewhat alluded in the first article to the topic of ‘which broadcast address to use’ as being somewhat of a rough topic to figure out, which is clearly why I just stuck to a blatantly ‘works for me’ /24 subnet that usually will work on networks, until it does not.

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Reject Modernity, Return To 80s, Learn C.

July 10, 2026 by 113 Comments

We’re not exactly sure how old [SnailMail] is, but he’s probably a member of Generation Alpha considering that to our wizened eyes the lad looks only slightly older than a fetus– which makes it all the more impressive that he’s written his own text editor, from scratch, in C– on a 386. See, [SnailMail] tried to learn the modern way, with IDEs that have code completion and AI integration, but his thoughts couldn’t gel in the modern environment. So he went online and bought an old IBM-compatible complete with monochrome amber monitor, and a whole 4MB of RAM. Big spender that he is, [SnailMail] upgraded that to 8MB.

Rather than fall victim to the siren song of Wolfenstien 3D or SimCity, he set out to learn to code: C, specifically, since that language bridges four decades between [SnailMail] and his new PC. Even more specifically, he got ahold of disks for Borland Turbo C and Turbo C++, which brings back memories for some of us. Of course the lad also had to learn how to use a DOS PC at the same time, but a teen in the 80s with a fresh box would have climbed the same steep learning curve. Some of you probably remember doing so yourselves. Just like you–or the hypothetical teen in the 80s–[SnailMail] did it not by googling or begging Claude for answers, but by digging into books. Many books.

After all the reading, he started with a text editor, something we remember being a pretty big project not given to first year students. Video evidence suggests he pulled it off. He describes how his solution works from about 8:00 in the video, so you greybeards in the audience can judge his work for yourself.

If you’re a member of Gen Alpha reading this and looking to learn to program, we cannot recommend this technique highly enough– [SnailMail] is going to have a better understanding of the underlying logic of computer science than a lot of CS grads being frocked today. Especially when you consider he ends by promising to learn assembly, something we heartily endorse.

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UDP Broadcasting And Easily Finding Network Services

July 1, 2026 by 25 Comments

Local area networks (LANs) that use technologies like Ethernet and Wi-Fi are incredibly useful for letting devices talk with each other. Yet a core problem here is knowing which devices are where on the network, as anyone who has ever tried to add a network printer or network share to their system can probably attest to. Unless you happen to know the IP address of the LAN device, the port, and protocol, the target device may as well be located on the Moon without further help, such as automatic network discovery in lieu of waddling over to the device and reading the label listing its IP address.

Over the decades quite a few ways have been developed to enable such network discovery, with many of them using UDP broadcast as the first step. By broadcasting a global message on the entire LAN, any device that has an actively listening UDP socket on that particular port can parse said message and decide whether it’s feeling sociable enough to reply.

The topic of UDP broadcasting is however not as straightforward as it may sound if you’re just getting started, including the existence of many opinions on the ‘right way’. There is also a massive divide between a sprawling service discovery protocol like mDNS and a light-weight one like that one that I had to implement a few years ago for an open source project.

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