Page has been tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org.I believe that BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 is an excellent environment for people who want to learn about programming computers. About coding.
It is entirely free and may be downloaded for many platforms/ operations systems.
This page is written in the hope of making it easier for the first time user to install the environment on a computer.
Do not attempt this if you are not the person in charge of the computer you want this environment installed on.
Once it is installed, if you are careful about where you save things, I have no concerns about problems which could arise from using the software. But tedious mistakes could arise during the setup.
So... if you want this on a school's computer, at least persuade a teacher to set it up. I'd suggest that the teacher consult the school's IT expert.
If you live under your parent's roof, please involve a parent with the setup. I know you may know more about computers than your parent... but, trust me, they know more about when it matters to be careful, and refrain from just "doing things" when they aren't too sure about what that thing will do.
You don't want to "break" your computer, do you?
What are we going to install?
When we've finished the simple installation process, the computer will have...
An IDE for writing code in something like a better BBC BASIC
An emulator for the BBC Micro computer.
BBC BASIC??? BBC Micro computer??? They're ANCIENT! Stone Age!
WHY would anyone WANT an IDE or emulator?
I wrote my first computer program in 1968. I believe that BBC BASIC is a very good, very easy way for a novice to learn many of the things that go into creating a computer program. Learning them in an environment where many, MANY tedious distractions do not arise.
Yes! I would have anyone learning about programming move on to fancier platforms eventually. But if the learner starts with BBC BASIC, he/ she can learn many things that will be useful later. When they go to the fancier platform, there will be things to learn about. But the learner will already understand some important... basics!... of programming, and won't have to be learning multiple things at once. (I like Lazarus very much, for instance. Or the Arduino system, if you want to have a lot of fun connecting bvits of electronics to a computer.
But! To get back to the BBC BASIC from bbcbasic.co.uk...
An emulator is a piece of software that runs on machine X, to make it, or a window on it's screen, "look like" a different computer. It creates a "virtual" computer. In my case, "machine X" will be a computer running Windows. But the BBC BASIC from bbcbasic.co.uk can be installed on many other platforms.
IDE stands for "Integrated Development Environment"
IDE's are a convenience. They give you a nice editor with a screen that you type your code into. They give you tools for debugging. Etc, etc. But what they all have in common is a way to say "Okay, IDE, what would happen if I ran that code in my computer?". (In the case of the IDE we're talking about here, it is "Okay, IDE, what would happen if I ran that code in my emulatedBBC Micro?".
You are given two IDE alternatives by bbcbasic.co.uk. Both use the same emulator. (That there are two IDEs available becomes clear after you have installed it.) In these pages, I will only be using "SDLIDE". (I have little experience of the other IDE.)
bbcbasic.co.uk ndoes offer a package which they say runs in a browser. I haven't tried it. This seems something that "ought" to be installed on a system, ought to be installed with no further need of the internet.
Go to www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic.html
Do NOT click on any of the links below the prominent "Downloads" heading. (Middle column.)
Instead, DO use the "BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 for Windows, Vista and later" link under the "Versions" heading. (Left hand column)
That link...
https://www.bbcbasic.net/bbcsdl/
...offers...
Windows edition (Installer) (19.5 Mbytes)
Windows edition (32-bit, Zip) (21.4 Mbytes)
Windows edition (64-bit, Zip) (21.7 Mbytes)
... plus packages for many other operating systems. (This matters because you will have access to a large community of people who may have answers to questions you may want to ask at some point.)
I would suggest that you use one of the .zips. The installer works just fine, but it installs the software in a place that I wouldn't recommend.
You need to know if your computer uses a 32 bit processor or a 64 bit processor. Go to your main Windows Settings/ About. The information is there. ("x64" is as good as "64".) If you aren't sure, and your computer isn't ancient, it's probably a 64 bit machine.
Download the right zip file. At 19 Feb 2025, the zip was only 22MB. (You might want to keep a copy of it.)
The site providing this software says "The Windows zip archive... simply needs to be extracted to a suitable place."
What follows is merely a fairly ordinary installation process... but maybe you haven't had a reason to encounter this route before, so I'll spell it out...
Open two File Explorer windows side by side.
In the right hand window, create a folder for your BBC BASIC work. (I have yet to find a good way to store the BBC code written by me in a place separate from the software that provides the IDE and everything else needed to make BBC BASIC on my machine. When you've created it, go "down" into the (so far empty) folder.
I used "Documents\Prgming\BBCBasic"
In the left-hand File Explorer window, find the .zip you downloaded. Double-click on that.
What happens should look as if you've entered a new folder. At 19 Feb 2025, the contents of that "folder" were two folders ("examples" and "lib", and then ten files... aplib.dll, bbc256x.png, bbcsdl.bbc, etc, etc, down to zip.exe
You're actually looking at the contents of the zip file.
DRAG the two folders and all of the files into the empty folder that you prepared earlier on the right-hand side of your screen.
When I did that, a progress bar told me that 976 files were being copied. (That's fine... two folders hold lots of files.)
That's it! You've installed the SDL 2.0 version of BBC Basic on your computer!
Close the left hand window.
You need a way to start bbcsdl.exe. Implement one or more of the following...
Right-click on bbcsdl.exe. Chose "Pin To Start". (This will put a tile on your start menu, to make starting the IDE easy
Create a shortcut for bbcsdl.exe, and drag the shortcut to your desktop for another way to launch the IDE. Right-click the shortcut on the desktop, and opt for "pin to taskbar" for perhaps the most convenient way to launch the IDE.
Just before we move on to launching the IDE, there's two other things I would suggest. It isn't "necessary", but I recommend it.
Suppose that you installed it in ""Documents\Prgming\BBCBasic".
In that folder, you should by now have a folder called lib.
Make a copy of it, as it now stands. In File Explorer, right click on the "lib" folder. Click on "Copy". Now right-click on an empty spot in the File Explorer panel "lib" is in, click on paste. You should get a new folder called "lib-Copy". Rename that something like "lib backup made 19 Feb 2025"
That's the first of my "two more things".
Second: In the lib folder, make a folder for each person who might write programs using the IDE. I called my "Fred's Prgms", "Jane's Prgms", etc
--- **Now** (^_^): Use any of the provisions you made to...
Windows will probably ask if you want to run the file. If you want to use this great IDE, then you'll have to say yes.
Next you'll be asked which IDE you want to use. All of the pages I'm going to write about this will be done using Richard Russell's "SDLide"
That should give rise to...
Now you can...
People almost always start with a little program which puts "Hello World" on the screen.
For BASIC, that only needs
PRINT "Hello World"
I told you BASIC wasn't arcane!
Type in what you see below... the colors happen by themselves. The indent happens by itself. If you've used other BASICs, don't be alarmed by the lack of line numbers. (They were a "feature" of the Bad Old Days, from which we have, happily, MOVED ON!)
If you don't see the colors shown here on your screen, look closely at what you've typed. Put a small typo in "PRINT" to see the color change when something isn't quite right.
Then click on the green "arrow" (see image) to run the program.
If all is well, a second window will pop up. In it you should see "Hello World". (Without the "s.) That's there because of your (very small!) program!
The second window is showing what appears when your program runs.
That window is emulating the screen of the computer BBC BASIC first ran on. With the BBC computer, we didn't have anything like the first screen where, now, we write the program. We wrote the programs on the BBC computer, and ran them there.
Notice the ">" and the flashing underscore beneath the word "Hello" in the new screen. They say that "the computer" (i.e. the one simulated in the second window) has finished what it was told to do, and is now waiting for further commands. Type LIST and your program will appear on the screen. Type RUN, and the program will run again. You can also run it again by clicking the green arrow (triangle) again.
For now, type QUIT (or click on the X in the upper right-hand corner) and the second window, the simulation of the computer the program ran on, will go away, and you'll be back in the IDE. You'll need to do this each time you've run your program... until you are putting something mildly clever into your programs to save you the nuisance.
Well... you did it if my guide was clear. I hope it worked first time for you. Forgive my sadness, but a quick email to demonstrate that someone, anyone, tried this would be very welcome. (Contact details at the bottom of the page.) Do please "complain"... let me know where anything isn't sufficiently clear.
When you "write a program", you are putting together a sequence of instructions which tells the computer what you want done.
Getting that "list of instructions" right may take a bit of work, but eventually, you save your list of instructions, your *program*.
After that you.. or others, even people who know nothing about programming... only need to load and run the program when what the program specifies is wanted.
The window you saw a moment ago is where you do the "write the program" part.
I will explain how users should save what they've written in my second tutorial about using BBC BASIC.
But please have your users start with the first tutorial.
Some of the first tutorial covers ground we've just been over... but then, this essay is not meant for the learner.
Some of the following is in the second tutorial, but for what's there to make sense, I need you to set up a folder for each possible user of the IDE. What I want will, I hope, become clear to you in the course of what follows.
This explanation is for people who already know a bit about computers. The explanation in my second tutorial tries to be more user friendly!
I hope you already know that a hard drive is organized in folders.
What follows isn't The Way It Has To Be. It is just my best shot at a way to work that risks other things as little as possible.
When you invoke the IDE's File/ Save, you get something that looks a little bit like an ordinary Windows save. Please invoke that now, so you can "follow along".
It might help if as we go along, you watch the "Folder" (path) specified in text at the top of the dialog.
In the Save dialog's main panel, the top icon is usually a folder, with ".." next to it. Click this, and you'll go "up" one level in the hierarchy of folders. I'd stay away from this one, if you don't know what you are doing. If you click it by mistake, just click "Cancel" to leave the Save dialog, and start again. (It can easily take you to places you shouldn't be, if you want your computer to do its other jobs the way you like them done.)
The next two icons are also folder icons. They are identified as @lib$ and @usr$. THESE SEEM TO OPERATE ALMOST LIKE SHORTUTS. They DON'T entirely act like anything I've ever seen in the Windows File Explorer.
I'd stay away from clicking @usr$
Which leaves you with @lib$, which I WOULD have you click!
If the system was set up as I suggested, then after clicking @lib$ you should see a folder like "Fred's Programs" on offer. (If your name is Fred.) Click on that to get into "Fred's" space on the hard drive.
To recap what we have so far, without all the advice and warnings...
When it is time to save something, you may need to....
-- click File... Save...
-- in the "Save" dialog, click on @lib$
-- that should take you to a place with a folder that is YOURS.
-- click on that.
Now you are in the right place to save your program. You should see the names of programs you have saved so far.
Good news: I think that once you've got it right once, the computer will remember where you want to save programs, and just go straight there usually, saving you any need to click on @lib$, and then go down into your folder. Look at the "Folder" (path) specified in text at the top of the dialog to see if you are already where you ought to be. It won't always be present (!)... but you should be able to know you are in the right place from the names of files present there.
Give your program a name. Keep it simple. Leave "Tokenized" ticked. Click Save.
Oh... and, to my very new-to-this eyes, the performance of Save, SaveAs and Load is quirky. It seemed one day that files that were still in the folder I was looking at were not showing up in the list.
In a given session, once you have saved something, if you make changes, and save again, the earlier version is overwritten... as with most Windows applications. If you try to do a SaveAs, using a name already in use in the folder, you will get the usual "Do you want to over-write..." dialog.
So far, so good? I hope so.
What happens when it is time to get rid of some programs? Or maybe make a sub-folder within your folder? I think for these tasks, you need to use File Explorer. (If you make changes with File Explorer, they won't immediately show in the BBC BASIC Save dialog, if you have one open. Close it. Reopen it. Now, I think!, you'll see yhour changes.
That was my best shot at the "save" topic.
Happily I know a lot more about "everything" else.
This would be a good time to shut everything down. (Maybe take a break?) When you are ready, fire the IDE up again to be sure it doesn't spring any surprises.
(Shutting down, and re-starting makes sure that it WILL shut down/ restart, before you put too much work into something while your installation still isn't quite right!)
That's about it for my guide to setting this splendid system.
I'm sorry about the confusion surrounding saving code. But it doesn't shake my confidence in this system as an excellent first language for programmking novices.
A bit of time learning what can be learnt from BBC BASIC will pay big rewards when the learner goes on to something more sophisticated.
And it is easy to write fun stuff early in their programming adventure. Don't let the rather dull, "getting started" exercises in the first tutorials fool you.
What you've installed includes many games as Examples. Try some of them before deciding whether BBC BASIC can do fun things.
Many of the "programming" environments for novices are fun, and all well and good, in their own way... but too far from what "programming" means if you want to get even a little bit serious.
I hope you have people who will enjoy it.
Please get in touch if you discover flaws in this page. Please mention the page's URL. (wywtk.com/prgm/bas/bas-install-ide.htm).
If you found this of interest, please mention in forums, give it a Facebook "like", Google "Plus", or whatever. If you want more of this stuff, help!? There's not much point in me writing these things, if no one feels they are of any use.
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