{"id":347,"date":"2008-11-23T11:24:55","date_gmt":"2008-11-23T16:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/?p=347"},"modified":"2008-11-23T11:24:55","modified_gmt":"2008-11-23T16:24:55","slug":"start-simply-with-small-basic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/2008\/11\/start-simply-with-small-basic\/","title":{"rendered":"Start Simply with Small Basic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many of us IT pros tend to forget our humble beginnings in working with computers.&#160; For me, it was with the Commodore 64 computer (a product about which I have written several times in the past).&#160; I did a lot of learning and playing with that deceptively powerful machine.&#160; From writing my own rudimentary BASIC programs to typing in code listings for games from magazines of the day, it was an amazing learning opportunity.&#160; But with all of the technology that has been developed in the past two decades, what should aspiring future programmers use today?<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft Dev Labs has released <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/devlabs\/cc950524.aspx\">Small Basic<\/a>, a free, simplified development environment that has a humble goal:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Microsoft Small Basic aims to make computer programming accessible to beginners.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The product provides an approachable development environment and a simple but powerful language based on the ever-popular Basic syntax.&#160; It includes support for variables, different types of output, conditional logic, branching and looping and even subroutines.&#160; These are all extremely valuable concepts for beginners and IT pros to understand.&#160; All programs are saved in single files and there&#8217;s no need for a complex development environment, manual compilation, or any other project setup tasks.<\/p>\n<p>Among the features that are supported:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Command Completion and Reference:&#160; <\/strong>Code completion features such as Microsoft&#8217;s IntelliSense are both helpful and fun to work with.&#160; The following screenshot shows an example that provides annotated help as you type.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/smallbasic-main.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"SmallBasic-Main\" src=\"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/smallbasic-main-thumb.png\" width=\"460\" height=\"329\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Syntax checking: <\/strong>When you attempt to run a program, the development environment identifies bugs and tries to provide some hints on how to find and fix them.&#160; It&#8217;s not the most powerful system, but it helps reduce the pain of trial and error.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A Getting Started Guide<\/strong>: While it&#8217;s not context-sensitive, this beginners guide does a great job of introducing readers to basic programming concepts.&#160; The guide is still incomplete in some places, but it provides some excellent examples that can be copied and pasted into the code editor window.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Text output <\/strong>to a console window via the TextWindow object.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Graphical output<\/strong>, which allows the use of standard draw commands.&#160; Beginners can easily create lines, boxes, circles, and other common objects with just a few lines of code.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Turtle graphics<\/strong>:&#160; For those that don&#8217;t remember (or never experienced) the fun and simple Turtle language, the code is made up of commands that tell the obedient reptile how to move.&#160; Simple commands involving turning and moving a certain distance.&#160; You can use looping to create some interesting effects.&#160; The following figure shows our obedient turtle running in non-overlapping circles (the source code is in the Getting Started Guide).<\/li>\n<p>   <a href=\"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/smallbasic-turtle.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"SmallBasic-Turtle\" src=\"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/smallbasic-turtle-thumb.png\" width=\"244\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a> <\/ul>\n<p>Overall, I think the biggest and most beneficial impact of applications such as Small Basic is in its ability to stimulate beginners to learn and experiment.&#160; It helps then think both analytically and creatively.&#160; These are all things that seem to be lacking in &quot;modern&quot; education.&#160; Perhaps some simplified tools are the right &quot;toys&quot; to job the mind and imagination.&#160; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of us IT pros tend to forget our humble beginnings in working with computers.&#160; For me, it was with the Commodore 64 computer (a product about which I have written several times in the past).&#160; I did a lot of learning and playing with that deceptively powerful machine.&#160; From writing my own rudimentary BASIC [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff","category-it-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}