Learn to Program with Small Basic - I added 5 more book reviews
I added 5 more book reviews to this article:
Here are the five reviews that I added:
“This book… assumes no prior knowledge of programming and introduces readers to projects that take them from basic programming concepts (such as understanding variables, and user input) to more complex aspects (such as arrays)… The examples are relevant to students, and the narrative flows easily for the target audience to understand.
Each chapter shows example code and encourages readers to try out the code to see how it behaves. This approach creates some intrigue and a sense of curiosity to try out the code. At the end of the chapter are “Programming Challenges” that readers can do. While solutions to the exercises can be found, they are not in the book but on a website. The additional step to lookup the solutions encourages readers to work on the program first, then lookup the solution later. This book has some unique approaches to helping readers learn programming. Pros: Easy to understand, Helpful examples, and Well-written.”
“I feel the examples and exercises given in “Learn to Program with Small Basic” provide a fun and informative way of delivering the concepts… I found the book easy to read and follow; the examples are clear and well explained.
The use of colour coding and visuals enables students to easily follow along and gives them the confidence to try coding themselves.”
— Susan Nicholson, Middle and High School Teacher
“I am an teacher in a small University here in Brazil. I discovered Small Basic a few months ago and began to use it to create and test small algorithms to show my students. I have the paperback version of this book and it is amazing… It also has a lot of exercises that you can test and discover new ways to program with Small Basic. A special note here is that this book explains in a useful way how to use graphics… And I also believe that this is a good start for game programming because it has a few example games.
It is obvious that this book was written with love and dedication. It is clear for me that the authors are deeply involved with the Small Basic Community. My 14 year-old son will also use this to learn programming, and I am planning to create a small course focused to teach kids about programming in my city. This book is very easy to read and filled with examples. Buy this book and have fun, especially if you used Basic in the past!”
—Brazil University Professor, Amazon Review
This book has been really fun to read and the instructions are very detailed and very easy to follow. No previous experience is needed, and I was impressed by how quickly I went from no experience to writing simple programs. My 8-year-old son was watching over my shoulder when I was writing some of the code and his first question was “when can I try it too!”. I’m excited to move beyond the basic skills and try out some of the activities in the later sections of the book… this book is the best tool I could ever want!”
Great for kids: Like a lot of kids (and adults), my son enjoys computer games… I showed my son that he could download the program for free… This book offers a thorough introduction into Small Basic. It’s laid out like a simplified text book… it offers simple stories that introduce the programming basics that every language uses — if this happens, then do that — in fun and engaging ways. Once my son learns the “basics” of Small Basic, I think he’ll be ready to learn new ways to do the same things in other programming languages.”
Comments
- Anonymous
December 17, 2016
The comment has been removed- Anonymous
January 06, 2017
No, the creator, Vijaye, made variables global. I guess the idea was to simplify it down. The idea is that variable declaration is easily learned later. And you could always do it with commented out code. That sounds silly, but if you're doing something that's not needed, then you're just building the habit, which is similar to declaring variables in commented-out code. The big picture theory is that the fewer errors then the faster the student learns without giving up or being discouraged. I know that theory isn't for everyone.So that said/mentioned, we are taking feature ideas on this list:https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/24082.microsoft-small-basic-v1-0-known-issues.aspx#Feature_IdeasAnd after each release, we do a big stack ranking planning survey with all our teachers and users, to understand priorities better.Currently the team is focused on building a cross-platform web version. The team is all volunteer.As a teacher, you are invited to join the Microsoft Computer Science Teachers Network: http://aka.ms/MCSTNWe have a Small Basic group there with regular info and discussions with the teachers. We also have groups for Visual Studio and all Microsoft CS education efforts. Thanks!
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
January 11, 2017
Check out my latest book I've been involved with here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/user_ed/2017/01/04/new-book-microsoft-excel-data-analysis-and-business-modeling-5th-edition/ And on the topic of teaching kids to code, you'll see that Microsoft has 5 free tools that teach kids to code and 5 free programs: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/user_ed/2017/01/07/microsoft-kids-can-code/