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Somebody at Microsoft is doing things right in my humble opinion.
Let’s take a look at at it shall we?
Take a look at the interface.
Doesn’t look like much more than a prettified Notepad, does it?
Well, in many ways that’s what it is.
No Object Toolbars, no colour selectors, no fancy element properties windows.
Just you, a keyboard and a screen.
That’s the beauty of it.
Immediately, it showed me my weakness, my dependency on wizards and ready-made objects.
Now, in my defence, I haven’t written a Basic program since college.
Yet, even then we were taught on VisualBasic 6.
So I first looked for the elements that I could just drag into place.
My next move was to do the unthinkable - go to the documentation.
There isn’t even a Help menu.
I remembered good old F1.
I went to theProgram Menufrom myStart Buttonand looked under the directory forSmall Basic.
If you’ve done any learning of programming languages, you’ll know what that is.
What is this thing that came from nowhere with information just for me?
That’s the Intellisense function of the system.
This is what separates Notepad from Small Basic.
I think you’ll like it.
Then I can run it by clicking on theRunbutton.
Or, as the button shows, I can also press theF5key to run it.
So let’s run it and see what happens.
Now, a bit about shortcut keys since I already touched on the F5 keys.
Many of the popular shortcut keys do work with Small Basic, such asctrl+sfor saving.
If you’re thinking this is pretty rudimentary and simplistic, you’d be right.
Yet, that’s the point of it.
With these basics of programming, you could go a long way.
Small Basic does give you the ability to use interactivity with your user, create graphics and use colour.
Another neat built in object is the Turtle.
Turtle makes Small Basic a useable platform for teaching kids to program.
Who can resist telling a Turtle to move 100 spaces and then watching it go?
Or how about watching Turtle draw a fractal?
Give it a try.
Let us know what you think about it.
