This makes me so excited. I grew up just after the BASIC era and my first computer was a 486 running MS-DOS (without a BASIC interpreter), so my introduction to programming came quite late. I had endless fun tinkering around in a commercial product called DIV Games Studio [1]. It included a very simple language with everything from parallel game loops to video modes, in an IDE with a debugger, sprite editor etc. You could even compile your games to DOS executables for distribution. Apparently people are still keeping the project alive and are making games with it: http://div-arena.co.uk/games/
Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
21–30 of 106 posts
Re: Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
#22I so, so wish something like Fuze was available for ioS. I'm an old-school ZX-Spectrum tinkerer and I still miss Basic. I can't help thinking it would still be unsurpassed as a simple (text-based) way of teaching coding to kids.
I learned on QBasic and have been out of the game for a long time but how do the kids start out these days? Do they use Python or JS? BASIC seems like the perfect language for complete beginners to start out on due to the lack of things like imports or main methods needed initially.
Re: Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are so many things like Fuze for iOS. I've tested a number of them on my kids over the years, and I'd suggest: Codea is great. Lua, not basic. Great asset management for games. Pythonista is pretty good. Python, not basic. Swift Playgrounds is pretty great. Swift, not basic. You can do pretty much anything, including 3D and AR.
You know what Lua, Python and Swift have in common? None of them are as immediately accessible as Basic. Visual programming languages like Scratch et al have risen for a reason.
python is pretty accessible and isn't a dead end like Basic
Re: Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
#24If this is anywhere near as powerful as PICO-8, we could start seeing ports of those games over to this. In fact, I'd probably port (and finish) my PICO-8 game if it's powerful enough.
Re: Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
#25There's Labview, Scratch, and now I think, Luna. Are visual programming languages really now so common that we need to specify "text-based" for new computer programming languages?
It makes sense in this context because Switch is a game console with touch screen and game pad (joy cons) as default input modes. Both of those types of input are not really typing-friendly, so one may expect that the language will accommodate for that and be fully or partially visual.
In the article they say it supports standard usb keyboards.
Re: Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
#26Is this an official Switch release sanctioned by Nintendo or do you need to jailbreak the Switch to run this?
Re: Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
#27This makes me so excited. I grew up just after the BASIC era and my first computer was a 486 running MS-DOS (without a BASIC interpreter), so my introduction to programming came quite late. I had endless fun tinkering around in a commercial product called DIV Games Studio [1]. It included a very simple language with everything from parallel game loops to video modes, in an IDE with a debugger, sprite editor etc. You…
MS-DOS shipped with QBASIC.
Re: Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are so many things like Fuze for iOS. I've tested a number of them on my kids over the years, and I'd suggest: Codea is great. Lua, not basic. Great asset management for games. Pythonista is pretty good. Python, not basic. Swift Playgrounds is pretty great. Swift, not basic. You can do pretty much anything, including 3D and AR.
You know what Lua, Python and Swift have in common? None of them are as immediately accessible as Basic. Visual programming languages like Scratch et al have risen for a reason.
I've taught middle-schoolers coding with scratch and they like it a first but quickly get tired of the interface especially for anything more than 'hello world'. Some even went as far as coding things up in pseudo-code on pencil-paper and then translating to visual/scratch. IMHO the best scratch impls let you switch to python/js without losing fidelity.
Re: Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
#29Does anyone have any experience with developing home-brew or indie games on the Switch here? I've considered getting one, but I'm limited by the rule "never buy a system for which I can't develop my own software" .. to what extent is this true of the Switch?
I'd love to put my Lua-based programming IDE on the Switch, which turns out is a bit similar to this Fuze project .. but I'm un-certain just how much of the Switch is locked down and how much is available. Do I have to register to get full features as a developer, or something?
Re: Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are so many things like Fuze for iOS. I've tested a number of them on my kids over the years, and I'd suggest: Codea is great. Lua, not basic. Great asset management for games. Pythonista is pretty good. Python, not basic. Swift Playgrounds is pretty great. Swift, not basic. You can do pretty much anything, including 3D and AR.
You know what Lua, Python and Swift have in common? None of them are as immediately accessible as Basic. Visual programming languages like Scratch et al have risen for a reason.
I'd argue that Lua is far, far more accessible than Basic. It really depends on the environment in which you stick it, though. Take a look at antirez' LOAD81 for example:
http://github.com/antirez/load81.git