Ok, i just started trying to program and wanted to try Qbasic because i dont have any cash to fork over just to try VB or anything like that. But i have looked over all the tutorials and tried and tried and tried and tried but still cannot get the stupid thing to work. Any ideas on how to make it work for me? Ive tried on both Win98 and WinNT and neither work for me. Any ideas would be helpful.

What precicely doesn't work? You may simply not have QBasic on your computer, in which case the simplest thing is to probably choose a different language.

- taubz

If you want to do C or C++ instead of basic, you can always use GCC (because it is free as in beer and speech). Same for Scheme (PLT, Kawa, Guile, etc are all free). The Java JDK is also free (as in beer)...I don't think anyone should be doing basic anymore--it teaches you to write unstructured code and may end up hurting you later on.

it may teach you un-structured code, but it also teaches you the fundementals of programming and the concepts behind it. When you use QBASIC, if you write a large program, you will find out on your own how to better structure it by using sub-routines and functions. Besides, its also a very easy to grasp language and is really easy on beginners

Scheme is just as easy (if not easier) to grasp. Line numbers and GOTOs have long been identified as bad software design practice. Once you get into one kind of mindset, it is hard to get out of it. You really should start to code using a real functional / imperative hybrid language instead of BASIC.

It is included with win98 but other than that I don't know, I doubt it. You can download a basic compiler here:
http://www.findpcparts.com/qbasic/firstbas.zip

Metamorphic is right, it is by far the easiest way to break into programming, just don't get stuck on it, after a couple months or so get a C++ compiler and start learning that.

Or just get a Scheme system from http://www.plt-scheme.org (DrScheme...Guile doesn't work very well on Windows [needs cygwin, no graphical listener, slower than PLT) right now. And then read http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dorai/t-y-scheme/t-y-scheme.html (Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days). It is a very nice tuturial, although it doesn't go over the new r5rs macro system (for that see http://www.scheme.com/tspl2ed.html).