The installer seems confused.<p>The first time, the installer installed the French version. I thought it might be some kind of fluke or I'd missed the language option. I redownloaded/uninstalled/reinstalled.<p>The second time, I had the Russian version.<p>Microsoft isn't making it easy for me to speak their language.
From screenshot:<p><pre><code> "Press to stop game"
</code></pre>
Funny how much sense that makes in a twisted way. I was thinking that they had some kind of functionality that had you attach text to a keyboard event to explain it. Alas.<p><pre><code> GraphicsWindow.DrawText(x, y + 320, "Press to stop game")
</code></pre>
It's just a ... feature.<p>Edit: and the key they hooked up "stop game" to was not space, it was escape :(
Though I began with GW-BASIC on MSDOS 6.22 way back, but...<p>I would like to see a similar poster with a poor kid shown running linux on an old donated PC (because he can't afford one that runs vista/7) and playing with Python in bpython.<p>Doing much more than what he/she can do in Small Basic and learning something which would actually get him some money in future if he/she goes in the right track.<p>I wonder if this is case-sensitive too, I dont like the "To", "EndFor". The title of the current script - "Tetris - Imported", is so confusing, I see no tetris anywhere, all I see is something done to the poor turtle.
I also wonder what is the default direction of Mr. Turtle, I just can't guess what would be drawn.<p>I would like the kid to know that he needs not know wtf is ".NET", teach programming, don't advertize to them. Let them create their own .net if they want to.
Its in the right direction, I remember learning qbasic on dos it was a great way to get started and then sadly I graduated to visual basic. Which was a good place to start ;) I can't even read it these days but we all start somewhere.
Two things I noticed right away.<p>1. The buttons on the ribbon are insanely large. Almost to the point I think I would be annoyed with this back in 6th grade. (I'm not 6 years old!)<p>2. The description of the move command is very technical. The same person that is writing docs for MSDN should not be writing docs for kids. (Seriously... "moves the turtle the specified distance")
Okay, Apple ][ Basic was fun.<p>Especially with the semi-graphics, semi-text mode. Line here, line there - you get the picture. I've got buddy back then who was able to write a whole BASIC application that draws Michael Jackson (yes there was Take One back then, but he wrote a 24kb code doing that).<p>Anyway... QBasic was fun too, and the MS-DOS one somewhat.<p>But this is not.
Anyone here actually have their first programming experiences with a "kid" language? I know I started on regular "adult" BASIC, then moved on to C and C++. No hand-holding anywhere, and I never found it to be too difficult.<p>So personally, I'm wondering what the value is here.
Gotta love subroutines without explicit variables, causing comments like:<p><pre><code> ValidateMove() ' in: ypos, xpos, h, moveDirection ret: invalidMove = 1 or -1 or 2 if move is invalid, otherwise 0
</code></pre>
If I were a little kid, that would look like Greek to me.