May 13, 2026
BASIC Instinct or BASIC Exit?
What if there was no BASIC in EndBASIC? – by Julio Merino
Builder of a retro coding toy asks: should BASIC be kicked out as fans argue, roast, and reminisce
TLDR: EndBASIC’s creator is wondering if the project should move beyond the old BASIC language and focus on the more useful parts underneath. Commenters turned it into a fight over whether BASIC is unfairly abandoned, hopelessly outdated, or worth saving inside a smaller multi-language platform.
After six years building EndBASIC—a retro-style coding project that runs on the web, desktop, and tiny devices—creator Julio Merino has dropped the question that sent commenters straight into full identity-crisis mode: what if the project kept its cool guts but ditched BASIC, the old-school language it’s built around? In plain English, he’s saying the most exciting parts may not be the language itself, but the reusable engine underneath: the thing that runs code, draws graphics, and handles files across different machines.
And wow, the crowd had feelings. One camp basically said, "yes, free the engine". A popular suggestion was to turn it into a smaller, friendlier version of the Java or .NET idea: one core system, multiple languages, everyone happy-ish. Another commenter immediately imagined plugging it into Haxe, arguing that a modern language could solve problems BASIC already lost the fight on years ago.
But the real drama came from the nostalgia wars. One person confessed they also built a BASIC interpreter, only to remember why they left BASIC behind in the first place, calling it awkward and missing too much for serious work. Then came the spiciest rebuttal: BASIC didn’t die naturally, Microsoft killed Visual Basic, one user fumed, before dragging its replacement as "a language nobody asked for." That’s the kind of comment-section energy you can hear from space. The mood overall? Equal parts respect for the project, sympathy for the creator’s dilemma, and chaotic debate over whether BASIC is a lovable relic or a language-shaped anchor.
Key Points
- •Julio Merino says EndBASIC has been in development for six years as a cross-platform BASIC interpreter for web, desktop, and embedded hardware.
- •The article questions whether BASIC is the right long-term foundation for EndBASIC, given the language’s limited current appeal.
- •EndBASIC’s core includes a pure compiler and VM implemented as a minimal Rust crate with no built-in commands or functions.
- •The project also contains a portable console framework that works across terminal, desktop, browser, framebuffer, and embedded LCD backends.
- •EndBASIC includes an abstract virtual file system with backends for memory, embedded files, host directories, browser local storage, and cloud storage.