14 DAY TRIAL // The first finalized version of Microsoft Small Basic is now available for download free of charge from the software giant.
Microsoft released Small Basic to manufacturing earlier this week and posted the bits on the Download Center where developers can access them immediately.
Microsoft Small Basic 1.0 RTM comes after no less than two years of development efforts on behalf of the Redmond company.
“Although we know that there a number of features we still haven’t implemented, we feel that Small Basic now has a solid set of the core features that make it useful to beginners. We hope to get everyone onto the 1.0 version so that we have a common baseline to move forward,” revealed a member of the Small Basic Virtual Team.
“Over the past few months, we have been focused largely on our online experience and also the Small Basic translation efforts. There is a huge demand for Small Basic outside the US, and so we want to help beginners in other parts of the world to get started in programming.”
Throughout the duration of the development process, Microsoft has been providing a steady flow of pre-release Builds of Small Basic, the last of which, v0.95.
In this sense, v1.0 can be considered only a minor update to v0.95, according to the software giant. This mainly because there are no new features introduced in the RTM Build of Small Basic 1.0.
Microsoft has harvested user feedback, especially input focused on new features, and the company promised that it will work to catalyze the evolution of Small Basic per the needs of developers.
“Small Basic 1.0 is a minor update to version .95 with the following changes: ◦The Icelandic language was added through the great work of a volunteer in the community. (Thanks to Jon B Georgsson!) The addition of Icelandic brings us to 20 languages. That’s pretty amazing and demonstrates both the strong demand for local versions of Small Basic for and also the great support we have from the global Small Basic community,” The Small Basic team representative added.
“We updated the Small Basic setup and version information. Some editorial bugs were fixed in the strings used by Small Basic. ◦The End User License Agreement (EULA) has been updated to reflect that Small Basic is no longer considered ‘Pre-Release’ software.”
Small Basic is, well, a basic programming language and environment, geared toward beginners that want to learn programming.
Microsoft Small Basic 1.0 RTM is available for download here.