What is BASin?
BASin is a what is called a "Development Environment". It was designed to make programming in BASIC easy.
Way back in the early 1980s, a company called Sinclair Research Ltd made a computer called the ZX Spectrum. Nothing quite like it had been made before, at least not as cheap to buy as Sinclair's computer - so a great many children of that time had one in their houses. For the price, it was very powerful - it had colour graphics, a full keyboard (trust me, that was a big deal back then!) and connected to your living room TV.
AND it played games! Lots of them. Throughout the life of the Spectrum, about 10 years, there were thousands of games made and sold. Because this was a new thing at the time (because games hadn't been around for long) most of them were made by people like you and me - who made programs as a hobby.
That is the real genius of Sinclair's computers. They not only had the ability to play games, they also had a secret weapon built-in: A programming language called BASIC. With BASIC you could give the computer instructions that could be used to make it do anything you wanted - including make games.
BASin runs what is called an "emulator" - that is, a program for a PC that pretends to be another computer. This means that BASin will let you program in the same language as the Spectrum, and that's what makes it easy to do. Programming for a PC is a very complex thing to do, and not something an absolute beginner should attempt. Once they have learnt one language though, it makes it easier to program in another. So starting with Sinclair BASIC on a Spectrum, although quite simple, will open the doors to a world that is so vast and full of fun that you will spend the rest of your life exploring it!
BASin's editor looks like that of the Spectrum, with the addition of codeword help, a "Coding teacher" that checks your program as you write it, and development tools such as a UDG editor and a variable viewer/editor. BASin also provides advanced debugging features: conditional breakpoints, watches, and full program flow control at the line/statement level. Don't worry if you don't understand what all that means - you soon will!
Program development in BASin is easier and faster than it was on the original ZX Spectrum. The Spectrum BASIC manual - an excellent introduction not only to the language, but to programming in general - is included here for beginners, and has been modified where necessary to take account of BASin's features.