I remember when QBASIC first came out, it was like a godsend compared to GWBASIC and the versions that came before.
The full-featured built-in text editor and enhanced graphics handling commands put it light years ahead of even GW. Not to mention the fact you didn't have to number every line of code.
I learned BASIC on a CP/M system back when it was just called "BASIC" or "Microsoft BASIC." The lack of a real text editor (you had to type each line into a buffer, one at a time) was one of the biggest drawbacks of BASIC back then. The easiest way to correct a single character typo, quite frankly, was to re-type the entire line of code.
The one plus to that old BASIC under CP/M was that you could actually compile your programs into an executable, whereas with GW and Q the computer had to execute them in "real time" under the interpreter making for sluggish execution. I heard Microsoft released some sort of compiler for QBASIC at some point, but I think it cost an arm and a leg.
