Chapter 1. Monkey—Huh?

Monkey is a high-level programming language developed by Mark Sibly, the creator of the very popular Blitz Basic range of programming languages. If you happen to know Blitz Basic, Blitz3D, or BlitzMax, then you know where Monkey is coming from. Its main purpose is to provide you with a helpful tool to create 2D games, but of course, if you are creative, you will be able to create other kinds of apps and programs with it, too. For example, interactive books could a very good playing field for Monkey.

The Monkey programming language is strongly inspired by BASIC and JAVA. BASIC, in particular, is known to be a beginner's programming language. So naturally, Monkey is easy to learn and you can get up and running very fast; just as with most of the BASIC dialects. But it doesn't have to stop there. Monkey is also very extendable through third-party, or your own, Monkey source code and also native code running on each platform.

In this chapter, we will learn what Monkey is in general, how the toolset behind it works, and what kind of general features Monkey provides you with. We won't go into these things in great detail, but just give an overview. We also will have some playtime with games that were created with Monkey. So, if you happen to know all this already, it is safe for you to skip this little chapter and head right on to Chapter 2, Getting to Know Your Monkey—a Trip to the Zoo. If not, then keep on reading and you will learn a little about Monkey's background.