Teaching Kids to Code: BASIC Reloaded

What it the first programming language you learnt? If you are my age, chances are your first programming language was GW BASIC that you learnt in class 5. But I soon learnt that to do anything serious I had to learn Pascal or Cobol.

Microsoft is now reviving the old magic with new technology fuelling the programming paradigm. They have announced – “Small Basic”. This programming language that comes with its own development studio is placed as the first programming language that is easy to learn and uses only only 15 keywords.

SmallBasic

However, the technology behind it is state of the art .NET framework 3.5. The development environment is simple but has friendly features like Intellisense and context sensitive help.

The language and development tools are available for FREE: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

The tools are supported by forums and a team blog. To get the kids started you have a “Get Started Guide” too that can simply be printed and shared with students. For a country like India, that is known for technology prowess this tool will help schools with little budget to start teaching programming in early classes. So now, go and get those little angels an unfair advantage by teaching them programming early on.

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