There are many programming languages in use, and all have useful, specialized features. Some are learned with difficulty, and therefore have a limited usefulness for the non- or semi-professional programmer. Some have limited capabilities which also handicap their usefulness or practicality.

Several of the hottest languages around currently are Java and C++. Java is a relatively new language in its current form; but C++ ( a redesigned C) has been around for several versions.

Many people were introduced to BASIC in simpler days, on small home computers such as Commodore, Apple, Sinclair, and the TRS and color computers by Radio Shack. People were not only playing computer games, but actually programming useful utility apps for home or for a small business; and this was being done in BASIC. BASIC, and its many subset variants, is an easy, almost intuitive language to learn to use. Most of BASIC's early variants were interactive; you typed a line of Basic code, and you could immediately run it to see if the line had the effect you wanted. In other words, BASIC was an interpreted language, and most modern varities of BASIC still have an interpreter; and the code is usually compiled into an EXE file when it is running properly.

When the computer world embraced the Windows GUI environment languages had to "modernize" to take advantage of the GUI interface. Many were not "modernized" and are still essentially DOS based languages; although many companies are beginning to write GUI implementations for many of them.
BASIC has moved along with the times and appears in many GUI versions now. For those of us who still love BASIC and its sister languages (more about other BASIC-like languages later), we offer a short tutorial that will guide you through beginning BASIC and on to the GUI-BASICS we also review here.

For this tutorial we need to use a Basic that is capable of running in Windows, and we suggest using LibertyBasic for the programming examples. It has a full-featured non-expiring trial version that will cost nothing and would be suitable to use in the following pages for our programming experience.

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