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• Thursday, September 14, 2006 09:32 AM

  I miss BASIC in ROM too, but...

  I agree that kids are missing something by not having a line-oreiented, interpreted language built-in. But QBASIC still runs under WinXP, and it's free and easy to get. (By the way, BASIC doesn't force you to write bad code; it doesn't randomly insert GOTO's - you have to put them there yourself...)

  My son, 7, took an early and avid interest in computers and programming. In looking for resources for him, I have found that along with the decline of BASIC has been a decline in good introductory programming books for kids. There are some decent online tutorials (including Ted Felix's very good QBASIC tutorial: http://tedfelix.com/qbasic/index.html), but almost no good books. I'd like him to be able to try stuff on his own, but I'm not comfortable turning him loose on the Internet searching for programming tutorials. So a real, old-fashioned dead-trees book has some appeal. If you stick with BASIC, there are a lot of the old classics available. But if you want to use something more modern, the selection dwindles quickly.

  He took "Creating Web Pages for Dummies" (not a kids book) out of the library and read it almost cover to cover. He experiments with HTML and JavaScript. He's also done a bit of QBASIC, KPL, and most recently Python (with PythonCard for GUI's).

  I think Python is a good alternative as a ubiquitous, line-programming language. Apple now includes it, and it's easily downloadable for the other platforms. The syntax is pretty intuitive (e.g. "input" and "print"). Its interactive mode is great for both debugging and seeing how steps of an algorithm work (just like BASIC). With some great libraries (like PythonCard for GUIs and PyGame for sprite-graphics-type games), it gives the ability to go beyond text or moving dots around the screen, which is essential to hold kids' interest in today's multimedia world. One could do the "Pong excercise" in Python with Pygame quite nicely, and teach the math concepts involved without syntax or spaghetti code getting in the way.

  I've actually started writing a book on programming for kids, using Python. But I'm not really qualified for that task (being neither an educator nor a software professional), and I don't know if that project will see the light of day. If I don't do it, I hope someone does, because there is definitely a need for something to help kids who show that spark of interest.

  —No Name Given
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