Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Small Basic.

For those who don't know, Microsoft development labs has released a new language called Small Basic. This is aimed squarely at the beginner. Do you remember how you started to program? Well, if your an old git like me it would have been on and old 8bit machine like the zx81, spectrum, Vic20 or Commodore 64 (or some other old 8-bit thing). The reason these machines were so cool to program with is that they were just so simple. Switch on and start. Basic was built right in and anyone could start and learn it.

Well, a chap at Microsoft called Vijaye Raji has started a personal little project that one day he hopes will be included with windows - like QBasic was with DOS. This is an amazingly good idea, and one I had quite a while back as well (see here), but typically never got very far with. He however is getting on pretty well and has now released a really nice little development environment that while a little buggy, is looking very cool indeed.

Theres an interviewwith him on Microsofts channel 9 which is well worth watching. This is something I'll be keeping an eye on and might even write a little something for in the future. Its very cool.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's very interesting. Thanks for sharing the information! Also, it reminded me of Ken Silverman's evaldraw. Pretty nice thing for beginners too.

As for myself i started from dos quickbasic. I remember dad told me how games are created and showed some basics of basic. The actual reason i started to program is to create games. I still have some of my very old creation though :)

The man with nothing to say said...

Wow. This is really great. I'm always glad to see something that could get kids interested in programming. It remind me of being eleven and poring over the c++ manual I got for my birthday.

Anonymous said...

I've been looking for a proper Basic dialect with a german dev-evironment that

- is as pretty as Simon's Basic once had been on C64 in
- has a german dev-environment
- is without costs

in order to get my lazy juvenile son started programming.

SmallBasic (only) did the job. Great.