Comments on: Just Let BASIC Die.

By: Rob R

Rob R — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:42:04 +0000

I am also one of those people that learned basic very early on (VIC-20, and later a C64) and pretty much digested any programming book I could get my hands on. I had no idea that programming was “complicated” either.

Fast forward to now – I have a son, and I am guessing that he’ll want to take a stab at programming when he gets older – so this is all very relevant to me.

I think that Python would be a great language to start kids with (except for the whitespace issue, which never occurred to me) – but I think I am biased because I use it on a daily basis. When I have to go back to C or C++ for anything, I cringe and despise the compile-test-change-compile-test-change cycle that I invariably end up in. So of course I agree that some languages are better than others for first-time programmers.

I think that the attraction to python is that it is not only a modern and powerful language (I personally use it for science related work), but it is also simple enough that young programmers can use it.

I think your book is great; I flipped though it and think that if I had Python and your book available to me as a kid, I would have learned a lot more and not “hit the ceiling” of what BASIC could do. Python, of course, has no such ceiling.

Kudos on the book :)

By: anatomical

anatomical — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:25:50 +0000

The one good thing about BASIC is that the student will find the limitations.

It’s like when you stop using GOTO because it gets to messy, you start using using procedures and functions, then they eventually get messy and you move to objects. (By the way OOP can be done in Freebasic which is a wonderful language.)

Has this impeded the learning process or enhanced it? I say this enhances the learning because it demonstrates the paradigms. I would also say that the paradigms are most important because at under 18 years of age there is plenty of time to learn various programming dialects.

By: Lemongrass

Lemongrass — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:59:32 +0000

I agree with the point that BASIC is not the way to go these days for kids. I’m not so sure about the choice of Python though. I tend to like new languages (and buying the o’Reilly books about them) and am now heavily into Ruby, but before that I tried Python and didn’t get grabbed. I think the syntax scares me.

By: laurent

laurent — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:58:35 +0000

sorry, bit of correction,
I meant “draw something on screen” rather than on string…
and I’ll add that if the maner is done easily, C is no harder to learn than BASIC.
It’s just a matter of understanding that any language is juste like another one with different expression.
Just like a real language,
English, French and Spanish are not that different even chinese, it’s simply another way of saying the same thing.
That’s why they’ve added rules and other concept to let people be able to translate from one to another.

By: laurent

laurent — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:54:40 +0000

I remember doing some stuff on my TI-83 with basic, sort of a pong game.
At least with basic you could create a graphical interface-like easily,
now you have to use a library written by someone else….
I’ve looked at learning C, C++, Python, PHP, Ruby, Java or whatever, but no matter the book, it always comes with the god damn hello world shitty console program that’s useless to everyone.
Nowhere i’ve found how a library actually worked, or how it was really done.
Nowhere I’ve found how the Win32 API (apparently written in C) actually worked or how it did to draw something on string.

A kid needs to figure out how things work in an easy maner rather than using some overkill stuff like a library to make a pong game. That’s what’s fun about programming. using a framework or a library kinda feels lazy.
The beauty of BASIC (or any other lookalike language) is that you can actually write the damn library yourself (which is really just a set of functions with specific parameters you will use over and over again, write once, call everywhere :D ) and then move on to some more hardcore stuff.

Programming is not that hard, it’s just that people don’t explain all that’s needed at the right time.
I’ve found it harder to learn about how the printf() function worked in C than learning about pointers (at least the basics of it)….

By: Ceyhun Alyeşil

Ceyhun Alyeşil — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:11:17 +0000

Well i totaly agree with you. People always talking about how they start programming with basic and its really boring. its true that python is new basic. easy to learn and use

By: LT

LT — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:00:25 +0000

Hi Albert et. al.,
I am learning programming for the first time (well, not totally true. i know html, but i find it totally different). i say that i am learning for the first time but actually, i tried learning BASIC several times (FutureBasic, QBasic, and Visual Basic) but always got stuck near the beginning. I’m almost finished your tutorials. It has only taken me a few days and I am already able to make some of my own fairly complex games. I love that I am already using a “real” programming language. This is the most straightforward non-jargon, easy-to-use programming tutorial i’ve encountered. thanks again! this is major.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 07:29:42 +0000

BASIC should die. With languages like PHP, C++, and Javascript I don’t know why someone would want to play in BASIC when you could play in something more powerful and have the same results.

By: first_language [strchr.com]

first_language [strchr.com] — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 05:46:33 +0000

[...] Just Let BASIC Die by AlSweigart. The author argues for using Python as a modern introductory language. [...]

By: Sjan Evardsson

Sjan Evardsson — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:31:06 +0000

I learned to program in high school, on an Apple ][ using Apple BASIC. The entire time I was writing my final project (a properly laid-out and printing AD&D character sheet generator with varying levels of randomness) I was wishing there were more elegant ways to get my ideas into program form. If Python had been around then I most likely would have much preferred it.

A few years ago one of my former co-workers taught his 6 and 7 year old daughters the basics of programming in Squeak – and within two years both of them were developing in Python, (the older also in Ruby and Java), because they had so much fun with it to start.

I don’t recall my initial foray into programming as “fun” so much as it turned into a personal battle of proving my computer math teacher wrong when he looked at my proposal and flow chart and said “it’s too complex for BASIC and this class, you’ll never be able to finish that in time, much less make it run.” (In the end, it did run, very well, and I was able to churn out randomized character sheets for AD&D as fast as the dot-matrix printer could spit them out.)