{"id":364495,"date":"2010-02-26T00:45:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T05:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techie-buzz.com\/utilites\/learn-to-program-with-microsoft-small-basic.html"},"modified":"2010-02-26T00:45:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T05:45:00","slug":"learn-to-program-with-microsoft-small-basic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/364495","title":{"rendered":"Learn to Program with Microsoft Small Basic"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is what my first computer looked like. It was a Xerox Sigma, if I recall correctly, and it took up an entire room at the college I was attending.<\/p>\n

\"xerox_sigma\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I learned how to program this machine in 1977. The college course I took was for a language called Fortran. The next year, I fell in love with Basic, and I’ve used it on and off ever since then. Basic is one of the easiest languages to learn, and I actually learned it from an instructional program on that huge computer. The name is an acronym for\u00a0 \u201cBeginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Microsoft wants you to learn Basic, and they’ve made it as easy as possible with the recent release of Small Basic<\/em>. They have a PDF beginner’s guide that walks you through Basic programming step by step. Here’s what Small Basic looks like:<\/p>\n

\"small-basic-program-listing\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first thing that struck me was that this program gives all kinds of help while you are typing in the editor window. If you aren’t sure how to finish a command, you can scroll through the pop-up to see what your options and arguments should be. When you click on a command or object word, the sidebar tells you all about it.<\/p>\n

Here’s a video showing your first steps:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Small Basic isn\u2019t the only free programming suite that Microsoft offers. A few years ago, they made three of them available. Here’s the quick list:<\/p>\n