Small Basic and Programming Essay Example for Free

Small prefatory and Programming EssayComputer Programming is defined as the ferment of creating calculator software architectural plan using scheduling languages. Just like we speak and understand English or Spanish or French, computers put up understand weapons platforms create verbally in certain languages. These are called computer programmeing languages. In the beginning there were righteous a few programming languages and they were really easy to learn and comprehend. exactly as computers and software became more(prenominal) and more sophisticated, programming languages evolved fast, gathering more complex concepts along the way. As a result most modern programming languages and their concepts are pretty challenging to grasp by a beginner. This fact has started discouraging people from learning or attempting computer programming. Small Basic is a programming language that is designed to make programming extremely easy, approachable and fun for beginners. Small Basics intention is to bring down the breastwork and serve as a stepping st unity to the amazing world of computer programming.The Small Basic EnvironmentLet us start with a libertine introduction to the Small Basic Environment. When you startle launch SmallBasic, you will see a window that looks like the following figure.Figure 1 The Small Basic EnvironmentThis is the Small Basic Environment, where well write and run our Small Basic programs. This environment has several distinct elements which are identified by numbers. The Editor, identified by 1 is where we will write our Small Basic programs. When you open a sample program or a previously beard program, it will show up on this editor. You can then modify it and save if for later use. You can also open and work with more than one program at one time. Each program you are working with will be displayed in a separate editor. The editor that contains the program you are currently working with is called the active editor. The Toolbar, identified by 2 is used to issue commands either to the active editor or the environment. Well learn about the various commands in the toolbar as we go. The Surface, identified by 3 is the place where all the editor windows go.Our low gear-class honours degree ProgramNow that you are familiar with the Small Basic Environment, we will go ahead and start programming in it. Like we just noted above, the editor is the place where we write our programs. So lets go ahead and type the following phone line in the editor. TextWindow.WriteLine(Hello adult male)This is our first Small Basic program. And if you earn typed it correctly, you should see something similar to the figure below.Figure 2 First ProgramNow that we have typed our modernistic program, lets go ahead and run it to see what happens. We can run our program either by clicking on the Run button on the toolbar or by using the shortcut key, F5 on the keyboard. If e realthing goes well, our program should run with t he result as shown below.Figure 3 First Program Output extolment You have just written and run the first Small Basic program. A very small and simple program, but nevertheless a deep step towards becoming a real computer programmer Now, theres just one more detail to cover before we go on to create bigger programs. We have to understand what just happened what exactly did we tell the computer and how did the computer know what to do? In the next chapter, well break up the program we just wrote, so we can gain that understanding.As you typed your first program, you might have commemorated that a popup appeared with a list of levels (Figure 4). This is called intellisense and it helps you type your program faster. You can traverse that list by pressing the Up/Down arrow keys, and when you find something you want, you can hit the Enter key to insert the selected item in your program.Figure 4 IntellisenseSaving our programIf you want to close Small Basic and come back later to wo rk on the program you just typed, you can save the program. It is in fact a good practice to save programs from time to time, so that you dont lose reading in the event of an accidental shutdown or a power failure. You can save the current program by either clicking on the save icon on the toolbar or by using the shortcut Ctrl+S (press the S key while holding down the Ctrl key).Chapter 2Understanding Our First ProgramWhat really is a computer program?A program is a set of didacticss for the computer. These instructions tell the computer precisely what to do, and the computer always follows these instructions. Just like people, computers can only follow instructions if specified in a language they can understand. These are called programming languages. at that place are very many languages that the computer can understand and Small Basic is one. Imagine a conversation happening between you and your friend. You and your friends would use words, organised as sentences to convey inf ormation back and forth. Similarly, programming languages contain collections of words that can be organized into sentences that convey information to the computer.And programs are basically sets of sentences (sometimes just a few and sometimes many thousands) that together make sense to both the There are many languages that the computer programmer and the computer alike. can understand. Java, C++, Python, VB, etc. are all powerful modern computer languages that Small Basic Programs are used to develop simple to complex software A typical Small Basic program consists of a bunch programs. of statements. Every line of the program represents a statement and every statement is an instruction for the computer. When we ask the computer to execute a Small Basic program, it takes the program and reads the first statement. It understands what were trying to say and then executes our instruction. Once its make executing our first statement, it comes back to the program and reads and execute s the second line. It continues to do so until it reaches the end of the program. That is when our program finishes.Back to Our First ProgramHere is the first program we wrote TextWindow.WriteLine(Hello World) This is a very simple program that consists of one statement. That statement tells the computer to write a line of text which is Hello World, into the Text Window. It literally translates in the computers mind to Write Hello World You might have already noticed that the statement can in turn be split into smaller segments much like sentences can be split into words. In the first statement we have 3 distinct segments a) TextWindow b) WriteLine c) Hello World The dot, parentheses and the quotes are all punctuations that have to be placed at appropriate positions in the statement, for the computer to understand our intent. You might remember the black window that appeared when we ran our first program.That black window is called the TextWindow or sometimes referred to as the Cons ole. That is where the result of this program goes. TextWindow, in our program, is called an object. There are a number of such objects available for us to use in our programs. We can perform several different operations on these objects. Weve already used theWriteLine operation in our program. You might also have noticed that the WriteLine operation is followed by Hello World inside quotes. This text is passed as input Punctuations such as quotes, spaces and to the WriteLine operation, which it then prints parenthesis are very important in a computer out to the user. This is called an input to the program. Based on their position and count, operation. Some operations take one or more they can change the meaning of what is being inputs while others dont take any expressed.Our Second ProgramNow that you have understood our first program, lets go ahead and make it fancier by adding some colors. TextWindow.ForegroundColor = yellow-bellied TextWindow.WriteLine(Hello World)Figure 5 Add ing ColorsWhen you run the above program, youll notice that it prints out the same Hello World phrase inside TextWindow, but this time it prints it out in yellow instead of the gray that it did earlier.Figure 6 Hello World in YellowNotice the new statement we added to our original program. It uses a new word, ForegroundColor which we equated to a value of Yellow. This means weve assigned Yellow to ForegroundColor. Now, the difference between ForegroundColor and the operation WriteLine is that ForegroundColor did not take any inputs nor did it need any parenthesis. Instead it was followed by an equals to symbol and a word. We define ForegroundColor as a Property of TextWindow. Here is a list of values that are valid for the ForegroundColor property. Try replacing Yellow with one of these and see the results dont go forth the quotes, they are required punctuations.