# Everything I Needed to Know About Programming I Learned from BASIC

**URL:** <https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/everything-i-needed-to-know-about-programming-i-learned-from-basic/336>\
**Category:** blog\
**Created:** [April 21, 2008, 12:00am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/everything-i-needed-to-know-about-programming-i-learned-from-basic/336 "2008-04-21T00:00:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 214

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/user_avatar/discourse.codinghorror.com/codinghorror/32/36371_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 8:46pm UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/everything-i-needed-to-know-about-programming-i-learned-from-basic/336/214 "2020-12-06T20:46:48Z")

</div>

There was a [40th anniversary edition of Basic Computer Games](https://www.kidwaresoftware.com/smallbasiccomputergames/), which apparently was updated to use [Microsoft Small Basic](http://www.smallbasic.com/)?

They even updated the cover 😍

 ![image](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/uploads/default/original/3X/a/9/a9e2044538678dac71f0e1590977f5e58cb1f655.png)

Here’s an updated [classic game from the book](https://www.kidwaresoftware.com/davidahlssmallbasiccomputergamessamplechapter/):

> Civil War was written in 1968 by three Students at Lexington High School, Massachusetts: L Cram, L. Goodie, and D. Hibbard. It was modified into a 2-player game by G. Paul and R. Hess of TIES, St. Paul, Minnesota. It was ported to Microsoft Small Basic by BIBLEBYTE BOOKS in 2010.

On the left, the updated 2010 version, on the right, the 1973 original:

 ![image](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/uploads/default/original/3X/d/2/d24232ac841e930f076b39ec35c1984b98a16dd5.png)

I have to say the rewrite is .. kinda _worse_.. than the original? Judge for yourself:

- [Original 1973 version](https://pastebin.com/j4jzGd4V)
- [Updated 2010 MS Small Basic version](https://pastebin.com/5q1B0t2C)

As I guessed, MS Small Basic is basically a re-skinned `vb.net`?

> **[Microsoft Small Basic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Small_Basic)**
>
> Microsoft Small Basic is a programming language, interpreter and associated IDE. Microsoft's simplified variant of BASIC, it is designed to help students who have learnt visual programming languages such as Scratch learn text-based programming. The associated IDE provides a simplified programming environment with functionality such as syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, and in-editor documentation access. The language has only 14 keywords. Microsoft announced Small Basic in October ...

As you’d expect, most of it is [public on GitHub](https://github.com/sb/).

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/everything-i-needed-to-know-about-programming-i-learned-from-basic/336)._