Small Basic

I've been looking for a way to teach my children a programming language for a few years now. I keep changing my mind from teaching them a simple, easy-to-use language to using something that will be useful even if they decide to do it for a living. This has gone of for a few years and now that our son Evan is 13, it seems like it is time to stop messing around and pick one to get started.

I've decided to start with something simple and fun. It will teach the fundamentals and will be easy to get started with. One of my criteria for the language (and the tools you use to create programs with it) was that it could be used to make simple games. Just writing programs to sort numbers or edit text is not going to engage a young person. They want something they can use right away and that will be fun. I also wanted something that will help them along as they go. So, I decided to start them with Small Basic from Microsoft. It is indeed small with few commands to learn before you start in with programming. It comes with a nice way to write the programs and test them and the help system is not too bad. As you type commands, it attempts to figure out what you're looking for and offers information on the command you are typing. There is also a way to share your ideas with other people. And it's free!

This is going to be another of my irregular post series. I'll be posting any interesting things we find as we learn this new language. I'll try to add a few examples to make it easier to understand certain concepts in software engineering. But mostly, we're just going to have some fun.