I actually started programming around 2002/2003. At that time QBasic was of course already horribly outdated. But that was what my school teacher was using. We used it to have direct PEAK/POKE access to the LPT-Port (the big, bulky printer port!). So we connected LEDs and other Stuff to the LPT Pins and made them blink with QBasic (and Windows 2000).
I still sticked to QBasic a while because i refused to learn anything else and C-Style languages just looked scary to me. By the way, if you are looking for a cool, modern, cross-platform BASIC Compiler take a look at FreeBasic. It started out as a QBasic-kompatible Interpreter but now is a Project on it's own.
Now that would've been more interesting. I never got to experiment with printing or connecting anything to my own system, but it would've been fun to make something like what you've described.
Indeed C was a bit intimidating to me at first. I took up a TAFE games programming course in 2008 to learn it, but our teacher was an ex-banker and didn't seem to really have any enthusiasm for games, and there wasn't really any "games programming" in the course. I left after getting mugged in broad daylight on a busy road (Mount Druitt is absolutely atrocious, never going back there again!)
I actually started programming around 2002/2003. At that time QBasic was of course already horribly outdated. But that was what my school teacher was using. We used it to have direct PEAK/POKE access to the LPT-Port (the big, bulky printer port!). So we connected LEDs and other Stuff to the LPT Pins and made them blink with QBasic (and Windows 2000).
I still sticked to QBasic a while because i refused to learn anything else and C-Style languages just looked scary to me. By the way, if you are looking for a cool, modern, cross-platform BASIC Compiler take a look at FreeBasic. It started out as a QBasic-kompatible Interpreter but now is a Project on it's own.