Welcome to the CRE Programming Club! Robert Eckstein and Robert Heard

What is the CRE Programming Club? First, we’re going to spend some time teaching you how to program. Next, we’re going to show you some techniques used to create video games. In 3 or 4 months, we want you to create a video game of your own. Doesn’t matter how simple or complex--just as long as you had fun building it.

Some Rules Standard rules for technology apply for all computers at CRE. Treat them with respect. Obey the same code of conduct you use in the classroom. Video games that you create for this club must be acceptable for all audiences. Mr. Heard and I will be the final judge of this.

Microsoft Small Basic Microsoft Small Basic is a simple version of the BASIC programming language, mainly for kids. However, it’s still very powerful! BASIC stands for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It has been around in one form or another since Children have learned BASIC (in one form or another) for the past 30 years.

Microsoft Small Basic Programmers have been busy creating Microsoft Small Basic for the past 4 years. It’s very easy to use, and best of all, it’s free! You can download a copy for any Windows computer (XP or later) at:

Why Am I Teaching This? My children keep wanting to know how to create a website and a video game. I started programming when I was 8. (I had to teach myself.) It’s time to pass the torch. I was inspired by a code.org video called “What Most Schools Don’t Teach” ( FA) FA)

Using Small Basic 1. You write your Small Basic programs in an Editor window. 2. You can run various commands by clicking buttons on the Toolbar. 3. As you write code, you can find information about commands in the Help window.

You can open and work with multiple Editor windows at one time. The Editor window that contains the program you are currently working with is the active Editor window.

Your First Program Now press that blue Run button...

...And This is the Results

Intellisense You’ll notice that a small window will appear as you start typing. Microsoft calls this Intellisense, and it will try to guess what you’re typing. If you don’t want to type in the rest of those long words, just use the up and down arrows to choose what you want to type, then hit Enter.

The End Program Button Sometimes, programs don’t quite do what you want them to do, and you don’t get the “Press any key to continue…” at the bottom. So, how do you get back to the Small Basic editor? Well, down at the bottom was a button that said End Program. Pressing this button will make sure that your program stops what it’s (not supposed to be) doing and quietly goes away.

The End Program Button

Choose the Save As button on the toolbar and save the program as “helloworld.sb” Now, close down Small Basic by clicking the red X in the upper right. Now, let’s say it’s the next day and you want to reopen your program. Start Small Basic and click the Open button. Select the program to bring it back up. In this way, programs are just like Microsoft Word documents... or pretty much any other document program.

How About That Save Button? It is your friend. Use it often. Pressing the Save button will allow you to save your program using the name is already has. If you haven’t saved anything yet, it’s going to ask you for a name just as if you pressed the “Save As” button.

How About That Save Button? Programmers save their work early and often. Why? Because they know that computers also have a tendency to break and end abruptly (in programmer’s terms we call that crashing), and if Small Basic or Windows or the whole computer crashes, well, you’ve just lost everything you typed since the last time you saved it.

Import and Publish Publish will allow you to save your program to Microsoft’s computers on the Internet. (Services like this go by the somewhat dreamy name of “cloud.”) When you do so, you’re going to get a six-letter-or-number code. Write that code down.

Import and Publish If you’d like Mr. Bob or Mr. Heard or anyone else to look at the BASIC code—maybe something’s not right with it, or you just want to show off what you did—all we have to do is press the Import button and enter that code. We get to see the BASIC that makes up the program, and we can run it.

Other Things Let’s make a few copies of that first line. Say we want two more copies of that line. Select the line of text. Then press the Copy button. Put the cursor to the right of the text on line 1. Hit Enter, then press Paste. What happened?

Other Things Try clicking Paste again. What happened? Uh oh. It didn’t go on its own line. Well, the good thing is that when we make mistakes, we can easily fix them, by pressing the Undo button. Actually, if we hit the Undo button by mistake, we can press the Redo button.

Other Things Correct the mistake and make three copies of the line. Save the program and run it.

Constants and Variables What’s a variable? What’s a constant?

Constant or Variable? How sleepy you are? How many hands you have? The color of your eyes? How big the school is? What color shoes you’re wearing? How many eyes you have? The color of your hair? How many sides a triangle has? How hungry you are? The position of the sun in the sky? The temperature outside?

Variables Variables vary (change), and constants are constantly the same. In the world of programming, there are values in your program that need to change all the time, and there are values that will stay the same. For the most part in Small Basic, you’ll be using variables.

Import the Following... Play and Get Inspired! TETRIS SOKO STARGATES ASTEROIDS XDM133 (PacMan) MDJ923 (Super Pong) ZZD394 (1942)

Next Time.... We’re going to learn more about constants and variables and explore the library of objects that Small Basic has to offer.