Learn Programming Fundamentals with Free BASIC-256

Everybody wants to learn how to program, and most of them want to jump straight to coding something like Windows operating system or Linux kernel. But every programming aspirant has to start with programming basics like variables, operators, functions, loops, conditional statements etc. If you have mastered the concepts of programming basics, then you can learn any programming language like C, C++, Visual Basic etc. There are two very popular easy to learn languages that teach you fundamentals of computer programming – Python and BASIC. You can use either of these to hone your programming fundamentals, but between the two BASIC is much easier.

If you choose to start your programming life with BASIC, then BASIC-256 is the tool for you. This is a small interpreter for the BASIC language which is ideal for the middle and high-school students. You can get it from its sourceForge website. The download is available both in form of an installer and as a portable application.

The GUI of BASIC-256 is very easy and looks similar to the IDE of many development tools. You can type your BASIC code in the text editor and then click on the green play button to execute the code. The output of the code is displayed in the right-side panel.

BASIC-256 supports both the classic BASIC syntax as well as modern error handling through VB6 style “On Error” and VB.NET style “Try … Catch … End Try” statements. If you want to know more about the syntax of BASIC programming then you can  either buy a BASIC programming book on Amazon or check this free tutorial about BASIC programming : http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/BASIC_Programming.

The BASIC-256 also lets you save your programming code into KBS files which you can load at any later time. It also lets you copy the text output and the graphics output and paste it into any other program.

Conclusion: If you are in highschool and want to learn the fundamentals of programming, then you can choose the BASIC-256 interpreter. It is a very easy way to start learning about variables, loops, control structures and other programming basics.