{"id":5915,"date":"2015-08-24T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5915"},"modified":"2015-08-24T11:32:55","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T10:32:55","slug":"getting-back-to-basic-microsoft-small-basic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2015\/08\/getting-back-to-basic-microsoft-small-basic.htm","title":{"rendered":"Getting back to BASIC (Microsoft Small Basic)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written before about my son’s interest in computer programming (well – computers in general, as it seems he provides IT support for his class!). It started with Scratch<\/a> (at school), we went to an Apple Store for an Hour of Code\u00a0last year<\/a> and now, inspired by watching episodes of the BBC’s Making the Most of the Micro<\/a> series from 1983,\u00a0he’s moving up to BASIC.<\/p>\n

After a short hunt on the ‘net I found a Windows port of BBC BASIC<\/a>\u00a0but I wondered if he might be better using something that prepared him for other, more modern, languages (my own path went something like RM BASIC, Turbo Pascal, Modula-2, 68000 assembly, COBOL, SQL, C, C++, VisualBasic, HTML\/CSS, C# – although in truth the closest I get to writing code these days is a little bit of PowerShell every now and again). Then I found Microsoft Small\u00a0Basic<\/a>. After\u00a0a late-night on Friday getting back to BASIC myself (with a multiplication tables programme which I’m sure professional coders will baulk at, inspired by Ian McNaught-Davis<\/a>\u00a0in episode 2 of Making the Most of the Micro), I felt I’d re-familiarised myself enough with BASIC to get my son started – and he really\u00a0took\u00a0to it, moving on to graphical windows on\u00a0Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

I started out looking at\u00a0Beginning Small Basic<\/a>\u00a0(there are other Small Basic programming books available<\/a> online too) but the Small Basic reference documentation in the TechNet Wiki<\/a> came in useful too (like when looking up the available colours).<\/p>\n

If I have one gripe with Small Basic, it’s that it doesn’t seem to understand multi-user Windows computers: I installed it using my account, but it wasn’t visible when my son logged in; I reinstalled and now it’s not there for me.\u00a0Nevertheless, it’s a great way to get stuck in to programming, before\u00a0“graduating to Visual Basic” or\u00a0hopefully he’ll be learning something else, like Python, at school soon.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting to see how today’s nearly-11-year-olds view the computers of 1983 (by co-incidence, 1983 was the year when I turned 11 too…). Green screens, cassette tape input, floppy disks (none of those\u00a0new-fangled 3.5″ disks either), dot matrix printers, character-based interfaces (only a few days previously\u00a0he had asked me what I was doing in cmd.exe<\/code>) – will my grandchildren view touch screens and patchy mobile phone networks<\/a> in a\u00a0similarly quaint manner in 2047?<\/p>\n

Just for reference<\/h3>\n

My first\u00a0Small Basic programme is below (although WordPress has stripped out the indentation). I’m hoping my son can\u00a0do\u00a0much\u00a0better!<\/p>\n

Start:
\nTextWindow.Title = \"Multiplication Tables\"
\nTextWindow.Write(\"How many tests would you like? \")
\nTests = TextWindow.Read()
\nLoop = 0
\nRight = 0
\nWrong = 0
\nFor Loop = 1 To Tests
\nTextWindow.BackgroundColor = \"Blue\"
\nTextWindow.ForegroundColor = \"White\"
\nFirstNumber = Math.GetRandomNumber(12)
\nSecondNumber = Math.GetRandomNumber(12)
\nResult = FirstNumber * SecondNumber
\nOutput = \"What is \" + FirstNumber + \" multiplied by \" + SecondNumber + \"? \"
\nTextWindow.Write(Output)
\nAnswer = TextWindow.Read()
\nIf Answer = Result Then
\nTextWindow.BackgroundColor = \"Green\"
\nTextWindow.WriteLine(\"Yay\")
\nRight = Right + 1
\nElse
\nTextWindow.BackgroundColor = \"Red\"
\nTextWindow.WriteLine(\"Uh, Oh!\")
\nWrong = Wrong + 1
\nEndIf
\nEndFor
\nTextWindow.BackgroundColor = \"Purple\"
\nOutput = \"You got \" + Right + \" correct answers and \" + Wrong + \" incorrect answers\"
\nTextWindow.WriteLine(Output)
\nTextWindow.WriteLine(\"Would you like to try again? \")
\nAnswer = TextWindow.Read()
\nIf Answer = \"Yes\" Or Answer = \"yes\" Then
\nGoto Start
\nElse
\nGoto End
\nEndIf
\nEnd:
\nTextWindow.BackgroundColor = \"Black\"
\nTextWindow.WriteLine(\"Goodbye\")<\/code><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written before about my son’s interest in computer programming (well – computers in general, as it seems he provides IT support for his class!). It started with Scratch (at school), we went to an Apple Store for an Hour of Code\u00a0last year and now, inspired by watching episodes of the BBC’s Making the Most … Continue reading Getting back to BASIC (Microsoft Small Basic)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218],"tags":[592,542],"class_list":["post-5915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-microsoft-small-basic","tag-programming"],"yoast_head":"\nGetting back to BASIC (Microsoft Small Basic) - markwilson.it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Inspired by a 32-year-old TV programme, my son has started writing his first real code using Microsoft Small BASIC\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2015\/08\/getting-back-to-basic-microsoft-small-basic.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Getting back to BASIC (Microsoft Small Basic) - 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More than 3 million people have tried an Hour of Code already, in an initiative that aims to dispel any myths\u00a0that computer programming\u00a0is difficult and to provide\u00a0parents, teachers and students across the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/96B5-JGA9EQ\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":280,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2005\/11\/visual-studio-express-editions-and.htm","url_meta":{"origin":5915,"position":1},"title":"Visual Studio Express Editions and Coding4Fun","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 9 November 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Even though I'm no developer, I have been known to knock up the occasional script and once upon a time I could even have considered myself to have programming skills... ...Well maybe now I can start to build them up again as Microsoft are offering the Visual Studio 2005 Express\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Visual Studio\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Visual Studio","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/visual-studio"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5281,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2014\/07\/geeking-out-at-microsoft-research.htm","url_meta":{"origin":5915,"position":2},"title":"Geeking out at Microsoft Research","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 16 July 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to join the Microsoft Technical Community Council (MTCC), which is described as \"a\u00a0group of external IT professionals influential in the IT Pro world, who are engaged and interested in sharing their opinions and meet once a month via a Lync call\". \u00a0Basically,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5205,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2014\/04\/publishing-to-github-from-visual-studio.htm","url_meta":{"origin":5915,"position":3},"title":"Publishing to GitHub from Visual Studio","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 28 April 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Those who follow me on Twitter (@markwilsonit) may be aware that I'm\u00a0attempting to learn some C# skills in my spare time (what little of that I have). \u00a0It's not my first foray into coding - I have a Computer Studies degree and, in my youth I\u00a0wrote code in a variety\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":914,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/10\/compiling-c-code-without-access-to-visual-studio.htm","url_meta":{"origin":5915,"position":4},"title":"Compiling C# code without access to Visual Studio","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 10 October 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not a developer and as such I don't have a copy of Visual Studio but this evening I needed to compile somebody else's C# code to produce a dynamic link library (DLL) and call it from a Windows PowerShell script. Somewhere back in my distant past I recall using\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Microsoft Visual Studio\"","block_context":{"text":"Microsoft Visual Studio","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/visual-studio"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3482,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2012\/01\/resources-to-help-get-started-developing-windows-phone-apps.htm","url_meta":{"origin":5915,"position":5},"title":"Resources to help get started developing Windows Phone apps","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Friday 13 January 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday, I tweeted to see if anyone had any resources to help a non-programmer create a Windows Phone app (I haven't written any code in anger since I graduated 18 years ago, although I did used to write Basic, 68000 assembler, Modula-2, Turbo Pascal, COBOL, C, and C++): [blackbirdpie url=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/markwilsonit\/statuses\/157422139505512448\"]\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5915"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5923,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions\/5923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}