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Small Basic - Part 1 By Michael Sanders 11 November, 2009 Found in : toybox, blogs   Comment     Submit to Slashdot Email     Digg this Print     Add to del.icio.us External Links Read More

Looks like Microsoft may be taking a page out of their old DOS book, and encouraging younger computer enthusiast to get into programming.
Small Basic v0.7 was released somewhat recently, however I only found out about it late last week. Instantly upon writing my first Hello World program in Small Basic it reminded me of playing with QBasic back in they day. I mean, it's not an ugly DOS interface or anything. In fact, it's a really nice looking environment so far. That being said, it's still in early development so the IDE isn't exactly the most functional.

Back to the QBasic comparison though, Small Basic really reminds me of QBasic for the obvious reason that it's a BASIC derived language. But also because it operates in much the same way - no need to compile the program, no need to understand a complicated IDE, and no prerequisites to jump in and start learning it.

The interface is actually really nice, with some features on the horizon that could really make this a simple and productive way for beginners to learn programming. The language is clearly built with hooks into of the .Net 3.5 framework (if not entirely within). Read more »