Dear Bill, Thanks for helping me give my 11 year old an interest in computer programming…Microsoft Small Basic

Andy is a pretty bright 11 year old kid. Bright enough that I feel like he would really enjoy learning more about how and why the computer does what it does. The only problem is that I don’t think I could ever get him to eschew Pokémon and Nintendo Wii to have long conversations about object oriented development and learning the structure required to do anything in C# or some of the even more strict languages.

Recently Microsoft has brought back what has been missing for awhile, and given it a child like spit polish that makes me want to sit down and teach Andy about software.

Introducing Microsoft Small Basic

The problem has stood for awhile, when QuickBasic disappeared and computers stopped shipping with BASIC interpreters of any kind, you were left to start with a compiler based IDE and at that point any kid is probably going to tune out.

Microsoft has trimmed the getting started down to an easily consumable 61 pages and made the tool look fun and simple. There are a grand total of 11 buttons and a cute version of intellisense that has a cool way to show you what all of your options are.

They have included some basic graphic libraries that are designed to keep kids interested as well as flickr support. But don’t think this has to be child like. Based on .net 3.5, you can create your own classes all day long in Visual Studio to help your kids around a more difficult project.

I think back to my basic days fondly and know it’s the simplicity that got me really engrossed into it. I thank my dad for breaking down the barriers to keep me interested and not giving me crap for staying up for two days straight on a weekend to learn at the voracious pace only a true computer geek can appreciate.

So what do you get? You get a kid friendly version of BASIC with an easily workable 15 keyboards. The development environment is very simple but provides help, has intellisense and the language is pluggable.

It requires Windows XP or Vista and the .net 3.5 framework. Lately Andy has been completely enamored with a Dice Game our friend Ian gave him. I think this weekend project will be teaching him how to recreate the game in software. I for one am looking forward to the task.

Download it today for FREE!

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