Making Your First Program

To begin making a program first click on the New File button. You will now have a blank workspace to work in. Type in the following code exactly as it's shown here:

print "Hello World"


You will notice that when you type it in that Liberty BASIC automatically colour-codes it for you. Standard BASIC commands are displayed in blue, whereas, any text in double quotes gets displayed in green.

Now press the Run Button. After you press the Run Button you will notice a second window open up. This second window is known as the Execution Window (or Run Window). The Main Window (or Code Window) is where you create your program using Liberty BASIC code. The Run Window is where your program is run.


When you press the Run Button the computer looks at the code in your Code Window. It then translates your code into something that the computer can understand. After the computer is done translating it runs the new code and displays the results in the Run Window.

You will also notice that the Title Bar in the Run Window is Blue and the Title Bar in the Code Window is now Greyed-out. Like all windows programs, the window that is currently being used is called the Active Window. All other windows in the background are called Inactive Windows.

The PRINT Command

Unlike one might think, the PRINT command does not send information to the printer. Rather it prints information to a window. In this case the information is printed to the Run Window. In our PRINT statement above, the information that was enclosed in double quotes was printed to the Run Window. The actual command PRINT and the double quotes are not printed. There are many Commands in Liberty BASIC that will help you do many other things. For example the LPRINT Command does print to the printer. For a complete list of commands that are available go to the Help Menu, select Liberty BASIC Help and open the Commands Reference book.

Try adding a few more PRINT commands to your Liberty BASIC Code Window and see what it does when you run it.