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Microsoft Small Basic

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Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#81

Post by mratzloff »

untog wrote: post #22
dr_zoidberg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Javascript is a mess even programmers don't seem to understand at times I assure you, JavaScript programmers understand JavaScript. No need to project onto others.

Having interviewed quite a number of self-proclaimed JavaScript developers over the course of my career, my experience is that this is debatable at best.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#82

Post by ams6110 »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #49
dr_zoidberg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 graphi…

Not sure about the jobs (3) thing. It's a bad idea to focus on language popularity when starting out programming, because that changes rapidly. Javascript has only been really popular in the last few years. Who knows what will be popular five years from now.

Learn to program. Don't worry so much about the language.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#83

Post by codygman »

meta0bject wrote: post #77
pavlov wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you writing this from the year 1979? I have terrible news for you: John Lennon will be dead next year, and Altair BASIC author Bill Gates III is on track to become the richest man in the world.

Scaevolus touted as an advantage the minimalism of variants of BASIC over Smalltalk and linked to such a variant lacking structured programming constructs like functions. I pointed out the flaws of that and certain other variants and ended up at -4 as a consequence. Someone should really make a comprehensive list of programming languages beyond reproach here on HN so users don't inadvertently anger the mob. Obviously…

> Someone should really make a comprehensive list of programming languages beyond reproach here on HN so users don't inadvertently anger the mob. Obviously Haskell would be at the top

I don't think you'll get any arguments from any Haskeller about the record system being annoying, laziness being hard to learn about at first, or it being a more difficult (but not as difficult as people think) language to learn.

Perhaps I'm biased, but HN seems to cargo cult a lot less than other popular communities.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#84

Post by clouddrover »

_vijaye wrote: post #69
meta0bject wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you're the creator, I'd like to ask you, why BASIC and not Smalltalk? You mention a desire to eschew boilerplate and provide instant gratification--doesn't Smalltalk provide that as well if not better than BASIC?

This was a subjective decision. While I agree it's less succinct, syntactically, I feel Basic reads easier than Smalltalk - especially to someone with no programming exposure.

But that being the case, wouldn't Pascal have been even friendly to someone with no programming exposure? Of all the languages I've used, I think Pascal reads the easiest.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#85

Post by zamalek »

furyofantares wrote: post #60
_vijaye wrote: post #48

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 communi…

This project makes me really happy. My first programming experience was modifying numbers I found in GORILLAS.BAS to see what would happen. I didn't know I wanted to learn to program or even what that meant. But the only way I knew to play the game was to open the source file and then run it, which made me curious. I couldn't understand it, but it wasn't unintelligible, either. Being a single text file without a lot…

That's my story, too. The only difference is to edit the BAS I would need to restart the computer: I didn't have a VGA card so I ran a TSR VGA emulator (called 'phix'). It broke the QBasic editor. So even back then I was learning about the high cost of changes.

I eventually cleared out the BAS due to a mistake I made while working with the editor that I could not see.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#86

Post by JadeNB »

BFay wrote: post #66
JadeNB wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm, but it's not clear to me that it's not actually a potentially good idea, in two ways. The first, important, way is that a tool that offers solid theoretical foundations does not (necessarily) require those foundations. You mention algebra, for example, and it's fair to assume that most school students (and probably their teachers!) don't really appreciate the theoretical grounding of…

Was it the "Yeah" that made the tone seem sarcastic? I didn't really mean it that way, I genuinely do think it would be interesting to see what happens. Sometimes I wish I had been taught math from a more theoretical perspective. When I was younger, math seemed really boring, just problems to solve; how much money is left after this series of transactions, what is the area of this shape, etc. When I did learn simple…

> Was it the "Yeah" that made the tone seem sarcastic?

I honestly wasn't sure, so I tried not to assume. Subtleties of tone are easily lost on the Internet; thank you for taking the time to clarify.

> I've only found mathematics really interesting within the past few years, realizing how useful it is for creative things, like making music and art, or understanding programming at a higher level.

While I am deeply in sympathy with this point of view, and agree with it to some extent, I think that it comes dangerously close to the monad-tutorial fallacy (https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/abstraction-intuiti...). As a teacher, I have four reactions to "why couldn't I have been taught this way?":

1. First and foremost, this is true. Course structure is often not set up to reward creativity and exploration, and that is a real shame. However …

2. I have heard students complain about not being taught in a way that I know is common pedagogical practice. That does not prove (they could just have been taught by bad teachers), but leads me to suspect, that sometimes students don't recognise (or don't want to see: "just show me the formulas!") alternate approaches when they are presented with them.

3. In many cases, the 'aha!' moment now couldn't have been an 'aha!' moment then; it is only because of the long struggle, and the additional learning and maturity, necessarily beginning with the confusion and uncertainty of yesterday, that everything can suddenly click today.

4. Even if I knew today the exact thing that would cause that 'aha!' moment for you, it is almost guaranteed that it wouldn't cause the same reaction for (many) others. The mission of a teacher is to serve the class as a whole; it is simply impossible, in terms of time and (let's be frank!) the teacher's knowledge, to explore for each student the application that will serve him or her best. This is not to say that some more applications and creative exploration wouldn't be welcome—they absolutely would—but more that, often, the best that can be done is to provide you with the basic tools that will allow you to explore and find the 'aha!' moment on your own, probably outside of the classroom.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#87

Post by BFay »

JadeNB wrote: post #86
BFay wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it the "Yeah" that made the tone seem sarcastic? I didn't really mean it that way, I genuinely do think it would be interesting to see what happens. Sometimes I wish I had been taught math from a more theoretical perspective. When I was younger, math seemed really boring, just problems to solve; how much money is left after this series of transactions, what is the area of this shape, etc. When I did learn simple…

> Was it the "Yeah" that made the tone seem sarcastic? I honestly wasn't sure, so I tried not to assume. Subtleties of tone are easily lost on the Internet; thank you for taking the time to clarify. > I've only found mathematics really interesting within the past few years, realizing how useful it is for creative things, like making music and art, or understanding programming at a higher level. While I am deeply in s…

It seems very difficult to come up with aath curriculum that works for everyone. I agree that a creative approach might not be as practical as I imagine it, I've definitely suffered from the "aha, monads are burritos, why hasn't anybody told me this" fallacy before.

I keep hearing (mostly negative) things about the Common Core program in the US, I wonder what it's really like. Creative new ways of teaching always sound good on paper, but I hear so many parents complain about the way their kids are being taught. I wonder if most of those complaints are warranted, or if the new style of questions just take getting used to.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#88

Post by yoha »

kbenson wrote: post #35
yoha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: *it's

Have you ever looked up the definition of nitpick? I just did on a few different services. It's not flattering, and provides a good narrative for the downvotes.

Thanks for the explanation, I am not a native English speaker. According to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nitpick, the literal meaning is exactly what I meant: I was doing a small correction without much importance. I did not know it was negatively connoted.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#89

Post by kbenson »

yoha wrote: post #88
kbenson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever looked up the definition of nitpick? I just did on a few different services. It's not flattering, and provides a good narrative for the downvotes.

Thanks for the explanation, I am not a native English speaker. According to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nitpick , the literal meaning is exactly what I meant: I was doing a small correction without much importance. I did not know it was negatively connoted.

How negative it's interpreted is likely related to view relevant it is and how much it detracts from the discussion. If that nitpick was a rider on a salient point, I doubt people would have downvoted.

Re: Microsoft Small Basic

#90

Post by zeckalpha »

BFay wrote: post #29
nly wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... nah, go straight to Haskell ;) Just imagine them in 5th grade trying to explain Monads to their friends.

Yeah, it would be interesting to learn about pure functions and referential transparency before basic algebra.

Aren't they two sides of the same coin?
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