Small Basic, Being 10, and the Joy of Programming

All developers share on thing from their past: that magical moment where you realize that you can make the computer do what you want. After that comes the moment where you realize it's very very hard to actually convince the computer what you want.  Then comes the moment when you realize that you're going to spend the next fifty years trying anyway.

For my son Jonathan, the first moment came this morning about 7 AM.  He had downloaded Microsoft Small Basic yesterday and woke up early this morning to give it a spin.  When I woke up and went downstairs, he exclaimed, "Look, I made the computer tell me Hello!"  Ah, "Hello World ..."  We never get sick of that one, it seems.

 Here's his program.  It's straight from the Introducing Small Basic PDF.