

SmallBasic: "Fun" programming language for beginners - dsplaisted
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

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tuukkah
The intention is good: making a modern, yet simple programming environment for
beginners. The result is bad: including GOTO and omitting parameter passing
makes programming simple as in assembler, not simple as in helping you do the
right thing.

~~~
bdfh42
I have no idea where this un-natural fear of the goto comes from - I suspect
it is a university CS dept. myth. I feel pretty confident that I can write
well structured maintainable code in any language that is Turing complete -
and this little basic exceeds that requirement and then some.

I can't wait to give it to my young son and see what he can do with it.

~~~
tuukkah
I thought I made my point clear: including Goto in this supposedly
minimalistic language doesn't guide learners in the right direction (and using
it in the examples even less so). Goto is not used in modern programming style
even though some specific constructs can be expressed succinctly with it.

Regarding Turing-completeness: Perhaps you can write maintainable code in
Intercal or Whitespace, but most people can't or at least don't want to write
maintainable code without functions and static scoping.

------
dhimes
This is a cool idea--is there something similar for linux? My seven-year-old
wants to play, but he's really still learning to read!

~~~
Klonoar
<http://shoooes.net/> comes to mind.

If he's learning to read, there's <http://scratch.mit.edu/>. Scratch doesn't
really have a native version for Linux though - you can wine it, or you can
try the (somewhat unofficial) build at the following link. I've tried both,
and they work alright.

<http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=305>

~~~
tuukkah
Scratch runs on Squeak Smalltalk apart from some features that require a
Scratch-specific native extension to Squeak. Scratch is not free software, so
no wonder distros don't package it. The Scratch guys have a package for the
OLPC though.

Here's the best guide I've seen this far for installing Scratch on Ubuntu:
<http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=52179#p52179>

~~~
dhimes
I decided to start with a little python...just a little bit to add or subtract
a number repeatedly. He was able to follow it, but not, of course, do it the
first time. Maybe if his interest remains, he'll start playing with it be
himself!

