Naive BASIC

Naive BASIC

A small retro-style BASIC interpreter and development environment for any Android devices.

Naive BASIC was created for people who miss the time when programming could begin with 10 PRINT "HELLO" instead of installing gigabytes of tools, frameworks and dependencies.

It is inspired by classic ZX Spectrum BASIC and QBasic, while adding features useful on Android. You can write, run and save BASIC programs directly on your phone or tablet — including very old Android devices.

Features

• Runs on any  Android Device
• Lightweight — the complete APK is only about 84 KB
• Classic BASIC-style syntax
• 80×30 40×30 text screen
• PRINT, INPUT, AT, TAB, INK, PAPER and other familiar commands
• Graphics, keyboard and touchscreen input
• POINT, SCROLL, KEY, TOUCH and more
• Music and sound with PLAY
• Up to 8 simultaneous voices
• Background music with PLAY!
• Multiple instruments and adjustable tempo
• Simple persistent storage with MAKE, OPEN, PEEK and POKE
• Built-in tutorials, examples and games
• Minimal permissions
• Designed to remain usable on both old and modern Android hardware

BASIC that can become an APK

Naive BASIC is accompanied by Naive BASIC bas2apk 1.0, with NaiveWORK included. It can turn a BASIC program into a standalone Android APK.

Programs using newer Naive BASIC features such as PLAY! and numeric PLAY operands are supported in the resulting standalone applications.

In other words: you can write a small program or game in BASIC and turn it into an Android application without having to learn Java.

Included programs

Naive BASIC comes with tutorials and example programs demonstrating the language, graphics, sound and interaction. It also includes several small games and a music editor — so the first thing you have to write does not have to be HELLO WORLD.

Although you probably will.

Why?

Because a programming environment does not need to be enormous.

Because an old Android phone can still be a perfectly good little computer.

And because sometimes an idea should be allowed to go from:

10 PRINT "HAPPY"

20 GOTO 10

...to a running program without a 4 GB SDK standing in the way.

Source code & development

Naive BASIC is developed openly on GitHub:

https://github.com/ma-beast/Naive-BASIC

Source code, releases and development information are available there.

Current release: Naive BASIC 1.0

More games, tests, music and example BASIC programs are available in the separate Examples-BAS repository: Examples-BAS

Made by ma_beast Small apps. Big joy.