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Microsoft Small Basic

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Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#41

Post by curiousjorge »

stephengillie wrote: post #39

QBasic was the first programming language I learned, so I was curious: > How is it different from QBASIC? > Unlike QBASIC, Small Basic is based on .Net and can consume (not produce) "Objects". > It supports distinct Operations, Properties and Events. > It doesn't have GOSUB :) So this looks like an Object-Oriented QBasic. Awesome!

same here. My first run into with Basic was when I was 6 with an MSX. I was captivated by it but didn't understand what the white letters against the blue background meant. (MSX was ironically more popular in Asia than America where it was built by Microsoft). Pretty soon I got my own but it was a Korean version of MSX with only games on it. My friend had the MSX with keyboard and he showed me how to type stuff on it but we played games. It was interesting since I began to wonder how these games were made. Then later, I had an old intel 286 with monochrome monitor during the mid to late 90s. No internet, just a thick book about Qbasic from the public library, and me trying to create games on it. The thought of making my own video game was more than enough of an incentive to learn yet to this day I have not achieved it as I keep telling myself it's too hard, too much time.

Then came DarkBasic when I was reading PC Gamer in the late 90s and I got so excited about it. Downloaded it over the 56k modem (couple hundred megabytes) and fiddled around with 3d stuff. I learned how to make 3d models with animation in TrueSpace. But never got to make a complete game, just lot of new projects that never went anywhere. The most I got was creating a FPS level using sphere as the 'skybox'. It was so exciting to create my own world using photo textures and add lighting which gave it pretty good look. Gives me a huge shot of nostalgia just thinking about it and other early demos in DarkBasic. The UI was literally had a dark feel to it and that made it even cooler.

I've always thought that BASIC had a lot of things right in terms of being newbie friendly, I mean it was easy enough for a 10 year old so. It's what sparked my early interest in programming.

Even in the early 2000s we were using Visual Basic in high school, we could create a lot of neat things with it. Gui apps that just sorta worked. Anybody could pick it up and yes, students of all shapes and sizes were able to follow along and create things on their own. Everyone was coding.

Compare that with today with the myriad of frameworks and hundreds of different opinions happy to rip each other apart for the sake of ideology. A much less inviting community core (ex. stackoverflow) to new comers asking "dumb" questions and being punished. We seem to be going through a very chaotic period in the development world where Javascript is suddenly king and simplicity and user friendliness is shunned.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#42

Post by [deleted] »

curiousjorge wrote: post #41
stephengillie wrote: post #39

QBasic was the first programming language I learned, so I was curious: > How is it different from QBASIC? > Unlike QBASIC, Small Basic is based on .Net and can consume (not produce) "Objects". > It supports distinct Operations, Properties and Events. > It doesn't have GOSUB :) So this looks like an Object-Oriented QBasic. Awesome!

same here. My first run into with Basic was when I was 6 with an MSX. I was captivated by it but didn't understand what the white letters against the blue background meant. (MSX was ironically more popular in Asia than America where it was built by Microsoft). Pretty soon I got my own but it was a Korean version of MSX with only games on it. My friend had the MSX with keyboard and he showed me how to type stuff on it…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#43

Post by Nexxxeh »

bargl wrote: post #18
euroclydon wrote: post #8

If I put my kid in front of a modern Windows PC, leave them alone for a few hours, and hope they learn something, I'm not very optimistic. Let's say I install Small Basic on Windows 8.1 or 10. So now I've put my kid in front of an operating system that has such a high-level UI that it doesn't even have a proper list of programs. The media consuming portion of the OS is so heavily emphasized over the creative portion…

Put them in front of windows 10 with Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition installed.... I get the lock it down to command line only so they can learn the way I did mentality. I'm going to do the same thing to my son, but I'd say that Windows 10 is an entertainment device is going a little far. Windows has long been the enterprise software of choice for buisnises, MS Office? On top of that most of the software you lis…

> On top of that most of the software you list is all on the web (Netflix, Facebook), so the internet could be said to be all about entertainment. But again that's an oversimplification.

I'm not taking issue with anything you've said, but to wander off topic slightly... The Windows 8.1 app for Netflix is one of the best ways of watching Netflix. It supports the higher bitrate non-4k Hd streams, 5.1 audio, profiles etc.

It works great on the low-end Windows 8.1 tablets (like the Linx 7), whereas the Silverlight and HTML5 browser-based options can struggle to do HD smoothly.

Also there is now Microsoft Office Online. While not as good as the native versions, they are usable.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#44

Post by moron4hire »

lloydde wrote: post #34
moron4hire wrote: post #25

Recently ran across this, another MS research project: https://www.touchdevelop.com/ It runs completely in the browser. There are some interesting things in the interface, stuff I had even been considering adding to my project, like a full on-screen keyboard with special keys.

Is Small Basic a Microsoft Research project?

Well, it's an MS project. It was early, I didn't really think through my typing well.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#46

Post by keithpeter »

keithb- wrote: post #38
bphogan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have taught JS in higher education to complete beginners for three years now and have been very successful doing so. The secret is that you teach how to program, not how to JavaScript. How to program is entirely different. It involves breaking down problems, creating abstractions for those problems, and turning them into code. And JavaScript is the one language that gets out of your way and lets you create programs…

I agree with this sentiment. We don't need new, simpler languages to teach programming concepts; we just need a better approach to teaching. We don't skip teaching the English language to toddlers in favor of a simpler one. I learn "cat" before "encyclopedia" and "hungry" before "enlightened". Programming languages have similar levels of abstraction so one can start with basics and allow the growth/understanding/grok…

"We don't skip teaching the English language to toddlers in favor of a simpler one."

Well, they used to for a bit in the UK

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet

as a result of which I still (5 decades later) sometimes have to stop and think about the spelling of quite routine words. So I agree - toddlers get a subset with a restricted vocabulary and simple grammar but one that is actually a subset of English.

Now - if I wanted to learn enough Javascript/CSS/Canvas stuff to make a series of 'drag-gable diagrams' for use on an interactive whiteboard (e.g. area of trapezium or pythagoras' result) where shall I start? I have the head first book and I sort of like their approach.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#47

Post by rbanffy »

Learning BASIC made sense in the days of the Apple II or the Atari 800. It provided a nice-ish low-level abstraction of the computer, with PEEKs, POKEs and GOTOs to numbered lines. Today, with Ruby, Python and so many others providing simple ways to write simple programs, as much as it served us well in the 80s, we should let BASIC die rather than trying to mutate it into something that has no longer a place in this world.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#48

Post by _vijaye »

Author here. I made Small Basic when I was in MS in 2008. My goal then was to remove programming language ceremony (imports, defs, etc.) and get to instant gratification.

There are several others that are keeping it alive with a well maintained blog (https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=sm...) and a friendly forum that welcomes programmers of all age and expertise.

There's even a strong community in a Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/smallbasic/)

PS: I need to find a better host for the website.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#49

Post by Turing_Machine »

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #6
tajen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Javascript already suitable for that?

Javascript is a mess even programmers don't seem to understand at times, I never understood why people would want to teach it to people without any programming knowledge.

1) No installation, compilation, or packaging required

2) Runs essentially everywhere

3) Practical (lots of jobs, syntax is close to that of other important languages)

4) Easy to share your creations with friends (see 1 above)

5) Has REPL, garbage collection, closures, objects, recursion, anonymous functions... soon to have TCO.

6) Can be a compilation target for other languages

7) Good libraries for media, 3D graphics

8) Hard for a beginner to trash the machine (at least with browser-based JS, Node of course is a different story)

Yeah, it's pretty ugly in spots (it's certainly not as aesthetically pleasing as Scheme), but there are some real advantages there.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#50

Post by Narishma »

bam365 wrote: post #28

I'd like to be positive about this especially considering the thought behind it, but...this is bad. I read the tutorial PDF hoping not to find BASIC-style unstructured programming. I was disappointed. QBASIC was the first language that I learned as a kid, and I regret it to this day. Learning to solve all my programming problems using GOTO in such a formative time set me back months when I finally moved to structured…

You can do structured programming in QBasic just fine. It didn't require line numbers and had all the necessary tools like functions and procedures, for and while loops, blocks, user-defined types, etc...
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