20-Year-Old BASIC256 Interpreter Revived and Ported to Run in the Browser

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A hobbyist developer has successfully modernized BASIC256, an educational programming language that had stalled after a failed Qt6 migration, and made it fully accessible in a web browser via WebAssembly. The project involved migrating the original source code from SVN to GitHub, switching from qmake to CMake, and upgrading from Qt5 to Qt6. A single GitHub Actions pipeline now builds the application across four platforms — Windows, Linux, Raspberry Pi, and macOS — with each build gated by an automated test suite. The Qt6 upgrade unlocked WebAssembly support, allowing the complete BASIC256 editor and interpreter to run in a browser with no installation required. The developer credits a layered, incremental approach to modernization as the key to avoiding the pitfalls that had previously derailed the project.

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