SmileBASIC for Nintendo 3DS | Hacker News Reader

SmileBASIC for Nintendo 3DS

smilebasic.com

110 pointsniconii34 comments

3DS homebrew coming soon... https://twitter.com/smealum/status/523002877514493952

There's already a "C library for writing user mode arm11 code for the 3DS (CTR)" https://github.com/smealum/ctrulib

Okay that's it, off to Akihabara I go.

Back... Turns out the New 3DS does not come with a charger... I feel like I'm 10 again and I've ran out of AA batteries for my Gameboy Color

IIRC for some reason it's typical in Japan to not include chargers with handhelds or even sometimes AC adapters with consoles. For people in the rest of the world, the New 3DS will probably include an adapter.

3DS XL is sold without AC adapter in Europe.

I've had no trouble with this: http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=nintendo+3ds+usb+c...

I've been charging my 3DS exclusively via USB for at least a year.

Incidentally, for those who are interested, this is actually a newer version of Petit Computer for the DSi, which is also on the 3DS eShop.

dangit! I just bought petit computer last weekend. From the screenshots though this looks like the same interface as Petit Computer. Is this a new application separate to Petit or will this be an update for Petit I wonder...

Separate, unfortunately for your wallet... This one's a proper 3DS application, whereas Petit Computer is a DSi application that was carried over to the 3DS eShop.

That being said, I don't think the new version will run programs made in Petit Computer as is without a fair bit of tweaking, so you do have the benefit of being able to try out the Petit Computer programs already made. It's not a complete waste!

I guess I have something to play around with the smilebasic syntax. I can't imagine that the language used will change dramatically to the new version..

This looks incredible, hopefully we'll be able to upload scripts we write on desktops. But more likely they'll have some stupidly small limit and only inputable from the console. It'll probably be measured in Nintendo "blocks", which they decided to use over literally anything else.

edit: nope, I was completely wrong. This looks awesome. Finally, the nintendo 3DS is easily user programmable.

This looks like an iteration on PetitComputer, and there are a bunch of stuff on Petit on http://petitcomputer.wikia.com/wiki/Petit_Computer_Wiki

States on the sample page: All Screenshots and videos in this page were captured from the Japanese Version of SmileBASIC (PetitCom 3)

Ah, this is probably the fabled PetitComputer for 3DS, rebranded, especially since the old Petit Computer used SMILEBasic too.

Just in case someone else was trying to figure out, the New Nintendo 3DS sports 256MiB of RAM. Wikipedia in English, Japanese, Spanish, Catalan, etc doesn't tell for some reason (in Chinese it does say though).

This looks great! Hopefully "other countries" will include the EU. I wonder if it will be possible to side load code written on the PC. Does "Multiple Programs: 4 slots are available and they are isolated from the others to store and execute" really mean that you can only save four different projects (code files) on the system? Also, does anyone have an idea why arrays can only have four dimensions? Restricting just the overall elements or the maximum size in memory would seem more intuitive to me.

It sounds like you can upload programs to the Internet, so although it seems you can only have four stored in the 3DS at a time, I think it's just a matter of swapping them out.

I have the DSi version (Petit Computer) on my 3DS just now, you can have way more than four files. I'm not sure there's even a limit, beyond the amount of internal memory the DSi had. I don't see why there'd be a four-file limit added... many Petit Computer programs were made of up to a dozen files (sometimes more, though rarely).

I can't tell for sure one way or the other, since the site's English translation is a little iffy, and both the English and Japanese sites seem a bit vague on the matter, but there's a possibility the limitation is actually having four programs open in the editor at the same time, which would be far more convenient.

Wow this looks really cool, will it be in the US eShop? I would have loved something like this when I was a teenager playing with QBASIC back in the day.

At the bottom, the site says "SmileBASIC will be available in Japan and other countries in respective languages.", which suggests to me that this will be available in both the US and Europe. At the very least, its predecessor, Petit Computer, is currently available on the US eShop.

Cool! I am wondering if this will help teach programming to the next generation.

I learned how to program using BASIC on the Amstrad CPC but back then it was the only computer in the house. Nowadays there are so many programming environments to choose from.

So where to start if you want to teach kids nowadays how to program? Will SmileBASIC be a good start?

Unity, Android, XCode. This is already happening. You can take games and start to learn programming top down instead of bottom up. Take a ready made game, make modifications and see what's happening (similar to the turtle exercises where you programatically draw a picture using a predefined API and later learn how to implement the actual drawing API). Apple is currently undergoing an effort to teach programming using Swift and the Swift REPL (http://www.apple.com/swift/) I think it's much easier to get the current generation interested in programming using games and instant gratification (according to some teachers I talked to, there seems to be a trend for pupils not engaging in challenges, see also http://marshnaylor.kinja.com/my-stepson-plays-video-games-on...)

When I started learning programming it was really hard to accquire information and no one knew how to program so I couldn't get a mentor. Nowadays it's much easier to get all you need to get started learning programming. Which absolutely good, but there is a life lesson in this difficulty to accquire information that the current generation will probably never learn.

I think it will be really hard to engage kids into learning programming bottom up, but YMMV.

I doubt my 8 year old nephew would like to be introduced to Unity, Android or XCode as his first experience with programming.

I don't think these environments are very amenable to kids or complete n00bs. This other thing is something that is made with that demographic firmly in mind instead of an afterthought.

It takes less than a week to be productive in any modern dialect of BASIC. How long for Unity/XCode/Swift/Android?

It's not about being productive. It's about engaging a younger generation into programming.

How do you get children engaged into programming if you deny them the chance of finishing their projects fast? Are you actually claiming that the experience that modern versions of BASIC provide cannot be applied to other languages?

For simple games, something like Game Maker is great. You can start off with simple drag-and-drop commands, and scale up to using the somewhat C-like language, Game Maker Language.

Wow cool! This made me so happy that I already own a 3DS. If you are on the fence about it, but you played gameboy/nintendo for the past 20 years, go ahead and get a 3DS. This plus there are at least 7 or 8 games that are really fun.

This is a great idea. I wonder how finished programs are distributed. I have wanted to make something similar for ios for some time.

I imagine the predecessor to this must have been fairly successful in Japan to merit a sequel

Petit Computer has a function that allows you to share via QR code. Since the screenshots show that this is based on Petit, I'd assume that you have that in this as well.

I can't imagine writing 1.5k lines of code using stylus. Besides, why BASIC? Lua seems like a better fit. Codea uses lua and is amazing, but then again - writing code on touchscreens is always painful.

I love the aesthetics of this program, I'd be tempted to buy a 3ds just so I can see this in person!

This is great! Maybe I will finally get one.

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