What is this?

Question

Hello.

Sorry if i ask something that is obvious for most of you.

I am nearing 50 years of age, background for hobby programming since 1985. Professional level since 2013, thought now im on other business.

I have seen dozens of BASIC dialects born, how their forums are filled with happy peoples that want to program to learn or just for fun. I feel SB had those days too.
What happened? Peoples grow out of it?

TBH, this "forum" does not serve the purpose of SB. Hell, takes a while just to find this place and with tag small-basic i find lots of stuff that has nothing to do with SmallBasic at all.

Am i too old here or is all this confusing?

Answer 1

No.you are not to old (I am 84). Microsoft changed the forums last year to this "thing" with tags, but this is not clear to all users. Many questions about Azure land in this forum. I try to steer them away by pointing to other tags. The users of the previous forum seem to have disapeared, but some are still present here.

If you have questions about Small Bais, feel free to ask them.

Answer 2

Microsoft wants to make Small Basic disappear.
Last feat of organization was deleting these 4 tags.

The remaining tag small-basic applies to all kinds of things, e.g. simple clothes...
Despite intensive efforts, no clear tag for the "Small Basic" programming language has been found so far.

The currently most productive Small Basic user has migrated to the competition with his program ideas ==> smallbasic

Answer 3

Hi Kristian,
A year ago I also had hope that the Small Basic Forum would find a new home under the Q&A environment.
challenge-of-the-month-december-2020.html
But then threads were deleted again and again and no one knows who was responsible for it.
why-my-question-deleted.html
The first MS heavyweight asked NONKI if he would like to discuss or ask a question.
The second MS heavyweight blamed it on the spam filter and corrected it. But he hasn't.
LitDev wrote a post but it was deleted.

Even his complaint saying this isn't that great is no longer traceable.
When 3 SMALL BASIC heavyweights(NONKI,LITDEV,TRYHEST) get dumped like that, it's no wonder they turn their backs on Q&A.
Each of them has been involved with Small Basic for a decade and made a major contribution to the forum. They don't waste their time any more than the talented MS programmers.
It is like it is.
Q&A is not a forum where interested users can exchange information.
A new forum is unlikely.
Once there is Small Basic Online(SBO) on github. NONKI has a lot to do with documenting the errors and missing functions. I think it has since fallen asleep.
Small Basic Desktop 1.2 is estimated not developed for a decade and had the last necessary update in 2015.
It still has incredible graphical features that can be accessed with a simple syntax. It can be used as a basis for extensions in C# (see litdev-extension) and thus the simple syntax can be retained even in complex projects. Here I may see a forum for a specific area of interest. Provided that the Small Basic DLL will also run on future Windows with this NET version.

Answer 4

Kristian,

This might help you some:

https://smallbasic-publicwebsite.azurewebsites.net/resources

This will take you to a website that contains the old small basic forum. You will see the word forum in the dropdown list where it says learning and community. In the old forum you can find a ton of information that is still relevant on the nuances of small basic and fixes. I use it for when I have questions of how to do something. It's a lot of good information that was built up over the years. I don't know if you knew that it was there, but hopefully this helps you.

I think small basic is really good especially with the LitDev extension added. It's a shame that it is not being supported by Microsoft better than it currently is.

JR