Take a look at the interface. Doesn’t look like much more than a prettified Notepad, does it? Well, in many ways that’s what it is. No Object Toolbars, no colour selectors, no fancy element properties windows. Just you, a keyboard and a screen. That’s the beauty of it. Immediately, it showed me my weakness, my dependency on wizards and ready-made objects. As I stared blankly at the screen, I tried to think of just one Basic command that I could get started with. Nothing.

Now, in my defence, I haven’t written a Basic program since college. Yet, even then we were taught on VisualBasic 6. So I first looked for the elements that I could just drag into place. None. Nowhere. My next move was to do the unthinkable – go to the documentation. But wait! There isn’t even a Help menu. I remembered good old F1. Nothing!

I went to the Program Menu from my Start Button and looked under the directory for Small Basic. There it was, the thing that really makes this program worthwhile – the Introducing Small Basic (ISB) document.

As all good introductions to programming guides should, the ISB started me off with a “Hello World” program. If you’ve done any learning of programming languages, you’ll know what that is. The ISB says you just type this line in:

TextWindow.WriteLine("Hello World")

I started typing…T..e…x…what? What is this thing that came from nowhere with information just for me? That’s the Intellisense function of the application.

This is what separates Notepad from Small Basic. Whenever it senses that I am typing something meaningful, it will show me a list of options that you can scroll through using your up and down arrow keys. Each item has a short description beside it so I can decide if this is what you need, and how to use it. When I find the term that I want, I strike the enter key and it will auto-complete for me. This is such a nice happy medium between coding in Notepad and being lost in the gloss of the latest full-blown VisualStudio. I think you’ll like it.

Once I have my “Hello World” program done, I can save it by clicking on the Save As button.

Then I can run it by clicking on the Run button. Or, as the button shows, I can also press the F5 key to run it.

So let’s run it and see what happens.

The program opened up a Command window, or DOS window as some call it, and printed out “Hello World” just like I told it to. Since I didn’t write anything to tell the program what to do next, Small Basic automatically gives me the Press any key to continue… prompt.

Now, a bit about shortcut keys since I already touched on the F5 keys. Many of the popular shortcut keys do work with Small Basic, such as ctrl+s for saving.

If you’re thinking this is pretty rudimentary and simplistic, you’d be right. Yet, that’s the point of it. The point is to give the new programmer a usable environment, decent documentation and the spartan workspace needed to develop life-long programming skills and practices. In just 69 pages, the ISB document teaches the new programmer about variables, arrays, conditions and branching, and loops. With these basics of programming, you can go a long way.

If you’re also thinking that the programs that you could do with Small Basic would be useless or visually boring, think again. Small Basic does give you the ability to use interactivity with your user, create graphics and use colour. Another neat built in object is the Turtle. Turtle makes Small Basic a useable platform for teaching kids to program. Who can resist telling a Turtle to move 100 spaces and then watching it go? Or how about watching Turtle draw a fractal?

Old pro or newbie, or proud parent passing skills on to the offspring, Small Basic is a seriously fun tool for programming with. Give it a try. Let us know what you think about it.

Have you already done some work in Small Basic? Show us where we can see a sample in the comments below.

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Thanks to Google, in collaboration with schools around the United States, there’s a massive resource for learning how to program and code on the Web. It’s called Google Code University, and is a great place to learn coding and programming, or just to brush up on your skills.

GCU is broken into a few different courses – AJAX Programming, Algorithms, Distributed Systems, Web Security, and Languages. There’s also a section called Tools 101, which helps you learn how to use Linux, databases, SQL, and the like.

Before you really get started with Google Code University, you might want to take a look at the CS Curriculum Resources link. In the Resources, there are links to relevant background material to support the CS knowledge you’re about to gain – things like Discrete Math, Introductory Programming, and more. Though the University’s classes are all incredibly simple, this is a good resource for the little things that the University assumes you already know.

Within each course, there’s a ton of useful information. First, there are Tutorials, which are dead simple looks at the concepts you’re trying to understand. You’ll be walked through some of the basic steps you’ll need to work in that course, as well as go through a few basic exercises to further your knowledge and ability before you really get going.

Next, there’s a section of “Contributed Course Content,” which is all submitted by colleges and Universities for use in the Google Code University. It’s full of lecture slides, notes, and tutorials – essentially a whole semester’s worth of Computer Science class on one page, waiting to be taken whenever you want.

The Video Lectures Google provides are my favorite part of the whole thing, though. These are lectures taken from experts and panels at various events, in which they discuss a particular issue or idea centered on your course. For instance, in the AJAX Programming course, there’s a fascinating panel called “Creating a Rich User Experience,” that talks all about how desktop-like applications can be delivered over the Web using AJAX in the interface.

The University, available in a number of different languages, is licensed under Creative Commons. This means anyone can use it, feature it in their own classes, or share it with the world.

Google Code University is closely linked with Google Code, a massive repository for all the code Google has made available to the world. If you’re feeling like testing once you’ve got some learning under your belt, you can play with the Google App Engine, or take a look at some of the open-source programs hosted at Google Code.

In a world in which we need programming knowledge more than ever, it’s an increasingly valuable skill to have on your resume and in your tool belt. Google Code University is a free, simple, easy way to gain a lot of important coding knowledge in a small amount of time.

Are you a coder? How’d you learn?

Photo Credit: brajeshwar

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For those of you not familiar with Microsoft.NET technologies, they represent a platform and set of tools that computer programmers can use to build very rich, interactive applications for the Windows desktop, the Internet, or even hand-held mobile devices. Chances are strong that one of your favorite websites was built using Microsoft ASP.NET.

1. CodeProject

I cannot count the number of times I have downloaded code from this site over the years. The quick and helpful articles always include a code download and are written by real world developers who give you straight to the point help for a particular coding problem.

Developers who submit articles to the website are not paid, but instead submit the article and code to get approval of the site’s community. The site covers more than just .NET and the Windows platform, so it is a good resource for developers that need to go outside of their normal skill sets.

2. DotNetNuke

DotNetNuke is an open source framework that developers can download and use to build their own web applications using Microsoft ASP.NET. If you are a .NET developer and you have not at least downloaded the code to look at it, then you really need to immediately.

The software has been through several iterations over the years and demonstrates some of the most efficient coding practices around. Even though the site includes a professional edition for purchase, there is a community edition which is free to download and very much worth registering free with the site to access.

3. 4GuysFromRolla

If you are a web developer, which let’s face it, most .NET developers are, then this is a must visit site. It includes articles that cover everything you need to know about ASP.NET and even includes a lot of information for ASP developers (because, believe it or not, there are still developers out there using ASP).

Over the years, I have had numerous problems resolved by looking at posts on their forum or learned how to incorporate some slick new feature using one of the frequently posted articles.

4. DevSource

As you can see from the image, this online development magazine is sponsored by Microsoft, but don’t hold that against them.  I strongly suggest subscribing to their free weekly newsletter, since it will keep you up to date on all the latest rumblings coming out of Microsoft.

You also should check out the DevLife column, which includes regular posts by the experienced and very down to earth, Julia Lerman.

5. DevX

Another online development magazine, this one is not solely focused on Microsoft technologies and tends to profile some really interesting and niche technologies.

I have personally written several articles for them since they are one of the only web sites that wants articles about robotics and speech technologies. Their near daily stream of articles cover everything from traditional .NET development to VB classic (yeah, because there are still some people doing that still).

6. MSDN Magazine

MSDN Magazine is for the development world what the Nature Journal is for scientists. It includes standards that every developer should be following. They are VERY strict on what content gets into this journal. An article in MSDN magazine is typically much longer and more in depth than articles in any of the online resources I have previously mentioned. But you can feel assured that the articles were scoured and well picked though before making it to print.

7. Channel9

This Microsoft resource is a must see for anyone that loves to watch videos about really cool technologies. The Channel 9 team goes around the Microsoft campus interviewing various teams and often offers a sneak peek of up and coming software and technology.

In addition to interviewing the folks at Microsoft, Channel 9 also talks to industry gurus outside of Microsoft.

8. ScottGu’s Blog

Scott Guthrie is the Corporate Vice President for the Developer Division at Microsoft and his regularly updated blog often features announcements not seen any where else.

Scott covers everything from .NET base class libraries to Silverlight. If you want to impress your developer friends with your seemingly inside track to Microsoft, this is the site to visit.

If you are a .NET developer and you know of some really helpful sites, drop us a note and let us know about them. There are tons of resources out there for .NET developers. These are just a few of my all time favorites, so we would love to hear of others that you like.

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When I first fired it up it was a bit slow, but after that I was quite impressed. Presentation-wise it looks more like Dreamweaver than Notepad++ or HTML-kit, and this is true features-wise as well.

It has a tabbed interface, so you can work on multiple files at a time, and since it supports a lot of languages, you can use it for multi-language development too. HTML, CSS and Javascript are its main strong points, but with plugins you can enable php, AJAX, iPhone development, and more. One of the drawbacks I found is that it won’t open a file it doesn’t recognize. It would be nice to open any file like Notepad++ can, since many times you don’t need advanced features for a quick edit.

The selling point of Aptana for me was the FTP integration. I don’t actually use advanced features too much.

I like writing my HTML and CSS totally by hand, so those are just convenient extras for me. FTP support is built in very well and effectively. You can add FTP directories directly to your file list and download files from there, syncing them with every save. Downloading was a bit slow for me occasionally, usually just after establishing the connection, but not so much that I would call it a drawback.

Once you have a file loaded, you can get to editing. You get a sort of rich text editor, but instead of being able to bold text, change font and so on, you get tag-wraps, like “wrap with <h1>” and “wrap with <li>”. This is actually the one part I use, when creating lists there is no end to the encasings that I need to do, since usually my list items are links as well. Now I can blow through list creation in seconds. You can also switch between languages which will give you different options, like inserting CSS comments and wrapping in a loop.

Code collapsing is also available in the editor, and is done automatically. Start and end tags are paired automatically, so if you press the minus icon left of a tag, it will collapse it until the matching end tag. You can then expand again by pressing the plus icon, or just view the code by hovering over it. I use this feature a lot when developing a website, I collapse the parts of code I want to put in separate php files, and css that I will be placing in an external file later on for example.

Another feature I love, although haven’t learned to make use of yet is the outline feature. By default you will find this in the top-right corner, and it shows the tag structure of your code. Tags contained within tags can be expanded and collapsed and you can get a great overview of your code. One useful way to use this is for navigation, since you can quickly jump anywhere, but I’m sure I’ll find other uses later on.

Since I could go on and on about the features in Aptana, let me choose a few more quickly from my favorites. Validation works extremely well in Aptana, it’s built in underneath the editor in a minimizable box. It refreshes automatically when correcting and gives you very good explanations of the errors, right down to what you should change exactly. It’s very unobtrusive, which is something I rarely see in html/css related applications. The other feature I loved was one-click formatting, which changes your code from a mess to a beautifully formated code with tabs and line breaks in the right place. If you’re a messy coder, this one will come in handy, since you can forget about code presentation until the very end.

Beginners will love Aptana because once you familiarize yourself with the interface, you’ll realize that there is a lot of help there for beginners. From the one click formatting to the expressive contextual tag help to examples and validation help you could probably start learning HTML and CSS in Aptana itself. On the other hand, these features won’t get in the way of serious coders who don’t need in-your-face help. You can work normally without even noticing these.

Overall I am very impressed with Aptana. I have been looking for a tool like this for ages, but everything I found was not up to the job, so I just used a notepad replacement. While Aptana has shortcomings from the text-editor side, it’s obvious that it is not meant for that purpose. As a code editor it works extremely well, serving novice users and pros alike.

The size of around 100Mb may be a bit scary, but you get a lot of examples, code snippets and other extras, so it’s well worth the download. There is a paid version available as well with advanced features, but for JS, HTML, CSS and PHP you will be fine. You can take a look at the difference between editions and decide if you need to go pro.

Considering that it costs a fourth of what Dreamweaver costs and has about 9/10th of the features, I think you’re getting quite a bargain.

(By) Daniel, who needs to learn to write well, manage a blog and learn how this internet thing works but otherwise is a really great blogger. You can read his personal blog or his productivity blog if you dare!

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