Is there going to be a version 1.1?

Question

The title says it all. Is there anyone working on it? Is there anyone who even can access the source code?

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I am a 10 year old that loves math, games, and computers. 'Binary is as easy as 1, 10, 11.'

Answer 1

This really isn't the answer to your question but, what would expect to be in V1.1 that isn't in V1.0?

Answer 2

The roadmap of Small Basic is undetermined at this time. We’ll provide an update after our plans have been finalized. Until then, we will focus on the education and information about the current version of Small Basic and on continuing to build the community around it.

Thanks!

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Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Customer Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)

Answer 3

I aggree Ed. I have been here for quite some time watching these forums and alot of people have come and go, we need to build a solid community. I like your idea of a competition of writing articles for SB. As the language stands I think its quite solid and provides good functionality for a beginner programmer, not overwhelming them with 1000's of commands but with the use of extensions can become quite powerful.

Answer 4

I hope for a Senior-Edition of Small Basic (the current one could stay Junior-Edition)

It should have some additional keywords like

SelectCase, CaseIs, CaseElse, EndSelect

ExitSub, ExitWhile, ExitFor  : to exit from loops

Function([params])  : "sub" that accepts arguments and can give results

FunctionResult         : to get results from a "sub"

ExitFunction       

EndFunction

Local : to declare local primitives in sub and function, globals we have already...

Const : enable constants for better readable code

Enumerate   : thats also constants

EndEnumerate

and should have some more help than just intellisense.

Let's hope for Santa Claus...

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Answer 5

I would like to see function parameters, it's a pain without them.

Answer 6

I would like to see all of that, programming shall be fun and not a pain in fingers and brain

GLK004  is just an example why I think it needs locals. I copied just the important stuff into that file (it was supposed to become a sudoku-program) when I discovered that events interfere in variables, like this:

if x = 1 then

' if an event occurs just now and here are a few lines of code,

'x could have been changed by that events sub

' and this will be proceeded even if X <> 1

endif

 If you try the example you will have to click a few times into GraphicsWindow, maybe 30,40 times, there should just that red square point to the last clicked square. But see what happens for yourself. It even uses two different elements of one array in one call, i.e. it draws a rectangle to the coords of two different fields.

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Klicke auf "Vote as helpful" wenn ein Beitrag hilfreich ist, klicke auf "Propose as answer" wenn ein Beitrag die gestellte Frage beantwortet und klicke auf "Mark as answer" wenn ein Beitrag DEINE Frage beantwortet hat. ~@^@~

Answer 7

I aggree Ed. I have been here for quite some time watching these forums and alot of people have come and go, we need to build a solid community. I like your idea of a competition of writing articles for SB. As the language stands I think its quite solid and provides good functionality for a beginner programmer, not overwhelming them with 1000's of commands but with the use of extensions can become quite powerful.

Thanks Mainchip! I hope that we can continue to build some good content around Small Basic. Have you written anything up yet via blog or forum that you could turn into a TechNet Wiki article?

Thanks!

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Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Customer Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)

Answer 8

Hey Ed:

Do you have any idea who at MSFT has the code for Small Basic? I understand that there would be tons of legal red tape, but it would be awesome to have the community working on improving it (like adding an Extension manager).

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Please mark any answers and "vote as helpful" any posts that help you!

Answer 9

Just to pile on with the wish list...

Sub-routine parameters. Keep the programs all one scope, that is fine, but without parameters, Events are the only real motivation for subroutines in Small-Basic.

Love SmallBasic. Would love to see that one little update. And I would love to see it popup on everyones desktop one day.

:-)

Answer 10

Hey Ed:

Do you have any idea who at MSFT has the code for Small Basic? I understand that there would be tons of legal red tape, but it would be awesome to have the community working on improving it (like adding an Extension manager).

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Please mark any answers and "vote as helpful" any posts that help you!

Gungan, this is one of the possibilities we are now considering. But work must be done first. Thanks!

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Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Customer Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)

Answer 11

Hey Ed:

Do you have any idea who at MSFT has the code for Small Basic? I understand that there would be tons of legal red tape, but it would be awesome to have the community working on improving it (like adding an Extension manager).

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Please mark any answers and "vote as helpful" any posts that help you!

Gungan, this is one of the possibilities we are now considering. But work must be done first. Thanks!

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Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Customer Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)

Thanks for the info! I hope one day it is open source, maybe Apache or Ms-Pl.

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Please mark any answers and "vote as helpful" any posts that help you!

Answer 12

I can expect at least a bug fix release of the current version. there are several bugs in the current version of SB.

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Merry Xmas!

Answer 13

Please consider continuing the Small Basic project!

I'm a bit more of an advanced programmer than the main target audience of the project, but even I want to be able to make use of the simplicity and ease of use of SB for small projects.  The current release is usable, but could use some bug fixes.  I think there's a lot of potential.  And there is a need for a solid Turing replacement in certain situations with learning programmers.

Answer 14

There really is no reason why Small Basic couldn't be used for real useful applications.  The pull and wonder of programming has been lost over the last 15+ years and Small Basic is bringing it back.  It's crazy to have programming left only to the realm of the expert programmer.  Kids love to noodle and not have large barriers, otherwise they'll lose interest.  So will adults.  It's in the best interest of Microsoft to continue this - particularly with a debugger.

Answer 15

I think GLK004 is too busy for Silverlight because Timer.Interval = 20 [msec].  I changed Timer.Interval to 500 as GLK004-0.

Make sense?

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Nonki Takahashi

Answer 16

Bill Gate's note on making programming available to children might spur renewed development interest in SB...

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/27/tech/innovation/code-video-gates-zuckerberg/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5

Bring on the debugger, file I/O, and speed!

Answer 17

Small Basic need to be updated. The publishing feature doesnt work very well and looks very cheap and poorly made. I think the Ad for Sb that says "make your own games with SB today!" is really dumb and needs to be removed NOW!

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chase morell

Answer 18

I hope for a Senior-Edition of Small Basic (the current one could stay Junior-Edition)

It should have some additional keywords like

SelectCase, CaseIs, CaseElse, EndSelect

ExitSub, ExitWhile, ExitFor  : to exit from loops

Function([params])  : "sub" that accepts arguments and can give results

FunctionResult         : to get results from a "sub"

ExitFunction       

EndFunction

Local : to declare local primitives in sub and function, globals we have already...

Const : enable constants for better readable code

Enumerate   : thats also constants

EndEnumerate

and should have some more help than just intellisense.

Let's hope for Santa Claus...

---

Klicke auf "Vote as helpful" wenn ein Beitrag hilfreich ist, klicke auf "Propose as answer" wenn ein Beitrag die gestellte Frage beantwortet und klicke auf "Mark as answer" wenn ein Beitrag DEINE Frage beantwortet hat. ~@^@~

I would also ask for a Repeat... ...Until construct rather than having to cobble goto's and if... ...then statements.

Answer 19

I guess Small Basic project has decided on an erroneous path that the number of keywords should be kept to a minimum!

The lack of basic things like:

• "continue" and "break" for loop control
• "repeat" ... "until" for user input loop
• no Not operator to invert True & False evaluations
• be able to use Boolean operators outside If and While.
• Local for must-have subroutine scoped variables
• Const or Final for immutable in-lined compiled variables
• Something akin to the old Basic keyword Data, or Enum for arrays
• a new speedy integer index based arrays
• a "for each" loop for arrays. It's very hard to use dictionary index based arrays w/o such powerful loop
• hexadecimal literal constants
• etc.   :D

The lack of local variables and subroutines w/ parameters make Small Basic unsuitable even for introductory school teaching programming, I'm afraid!

A very successful kid's language, for example, is Scratch!

Like Scratch, Small Basic should come w/ lotsa sprites, backgrounds, sounds, music and voices ready to use!

Also:

• a render mode which uses blit buffer for smooth and flickerless dynamic drawing!
• Shape collision events!   :D
• Make a Shape outta some cropped region from screen.
• Save and print screen!
• Synthesized voice speaker!
• More ways to interact w/ Internet besides ones SB already has!
• Besides Stack object, have a Queue one which is more appropriate for fast user input and many other uses. A Peek() method for both.
• etc.

Small Basic would become fantastic. And in no way would become harder for kids!

B/c there's no need to teach everything available. But it's essential when advanced stuff is needed, to have them available.

I don't mean to turn Small Basic into something like C# of course. Just some essential things which is needed in any language, even beginners ones.

Any old BASIC versions, like QBASIC for example, had much more features available and were used for kids successfully!

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Click on "Propose As Answer" if some post solves your problem or "Vote As Helpful" if some post has been useful to you! (^_^)

Answer 20

I aggree Ed. I have been here for quite some time watching these forums and alot of people have come and go, we need to build a solid community. I like your idea of a competition of writing articles for SB. As the language stands I think its quite solid and provides good functionality for a beginner programmer, not overwhelming them with 1000's of commands but with the use of extensions can become quite powerful.

Yes 100% aggree with the openion NOT TO MAKE SB OVERWHELMING Still following few things if added for reducing the typing work it will be better because every budy starts programming from console program ( i.e. in small basic TextWindow)

There are no global functions. At least for console there shall be simple global functions like Write(…), WriteLn(…), Read(), ReadNumber() and Inspect(…).

Example

Syntax for Write and WriteLn

Write function shall be overloaded like

To write with set foreground color -  Write(“Some String”)

To write with foreground Cyan -  Write(“Some String”,”Cyan”)

Same thing may hold good for WriteLn(…) too.

Syntax for Inspect

Inspect(SomeVariable)

It will open TextWindow (if not open) and will just write variable name and value on new line as shown below.

SomeVariable = 2.73

Answer 21

Hey Ed:

Do you have any idea who at MSFT has the code for Small Basic? I understand that there would be tons of legal red tape, but it would be awesome to have the community working on improving it (like adding an Extension manager).

---

Please mark any answers and "vote as helpful" any posts that help you!

Gungan, this is one of the possibilities we are now considering. But work must be done first. Thanks!

---

Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Customer Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)

I think that the success of Small Basic is that people learn it and then move on to a larger/more complex language.  As such, I don't think there will ever be a LARGE community around it.  I think any updates should be focused on making sure that Small Basic is first and foremost useful for teaching/learning.  Of course, bug fixes are great too.

My point being that, as I understand it, this language is meant for the beginner as a building block for something else.  If there' s a lot of people coming here for a while and moving on, hopefully to a language starting with 'Visual,' then that is a great sign of the success of this language.  If you open source it, though, every enthusiast who started liking it for its simplicity is going to have 'just one more little thing' to add to it.  It will very quickly lose its simplicity that makes it so easy to use and useful for starting out new learners.

Open source for Small Basic would be a really bad idea, imo.

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Allen

Answer 22

I must agree that SB needs some bug fixes.

The integrated IntelliSense isn't the best, but it is ok for children. For everyone who want's a better one NOw, simply use Visual Studio. You only must import the SB Library and the coding can go on.

My personal wish for version 1.1 is that you add the Option to use more than one GraphicsWindow at the time. This is useful for junior and senior programmers I think.

At the moment I only know the fremy extension which provides the option to do this. But it is a pain to work with it.

P.S. A ComboBox and a CheckBox would be nice too. :D

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen Timo Greetings Timo

Answer 23

Bug fixes yes, but extensions for the rest.  ComboBox, CheckBox, multiple GraphicsWindows, call Subroutines with parameter arguments for example all in LitDev extension.

Answer 24

Sure, but more GWs could be combined with a better layout. A bit more like in VisualStudio. I still think it is to difficult for a big program to work with an extension. I would lose the overview.

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen Timo Greetings Timo

Answer 25

As Allen Shmallen said, I think you really should be using VS if you want its features.  It can be intimidating at first and not really something SB should be trying to move towards (IMO), but when you find the SB IDE limited, then is the time to try out something bigger - that's the idea anyway. 

Using VS you include .Net dll references all the time to do stuff, these are really just extensions for VS.  So using extension dlls to add functionality is fundamental to almost all programming - don't reinvent stuff some-one else has already done.

Answer 26

I still use VS for SmallBasic. But thanks for the tip.

It is just my opinion. I would like it much more to use the roiginal SB program.

But anyway. SB is made for children. And for learning children is it more than ok. :)

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen Timo Greetings Timo

Answer 27

 Hi Timo

I´m not a children

I wish to introduce myself al

¨incredible world of programming¨

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carlosfmur - Buenos Aires

Answer 28

 

Small Basicis an excellent way
to introduce beginners, in a friendly
on the platform .NET Framework
A young man startingin Small Basic
easily learn VisualBasic and C #

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carlosfmur - Buenos Aires

Answer 29

I'm sorry if I should have offended you.

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen Timo Greetings Timo

Answer 30

Please make sure your known issues are listed here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/24082.known-issues-about-microsoft-small-basic-v1-0.aspx

 

For example, the IntelliSense one is intriguing, but there are no details in this thread as to what's the problem with it.

Thanks!

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Ed Price, Azure & Power BI Customer Program Manager (Blog, Small Basic, Wiki Ninjas, Wiki)

Answer an interesting question? Create a wiki article about it!

Answer 31

We're working on a 1.1 with minor updates.

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Ed Price, Azure & Power BI Customer Program Manager (Blog, Small Basic, Wiki Ninjas, Wiki)

Answer an interesting question? Create a wiki article about it!

Answer 32

Minor updates would be very very VERY nice. 

:-)

I'm assuming you mined the forum for the list of bugs to fixed, so I will refrain from adding to the wish list.

Please let us know if you need a cheering section. I am sure I'm not the only one who would be happy to wave my hands around to show how cool this is.