Yet another Particle example

It is not much to look at except for being yet another example. I am trying to understand how a particle system works. Finding tutorials in Basic are either far too old or almost impossible to find. There are many, many tutorials in other languages (coding languages) but pretty much all of them are beyond my skills to convert. I would like to create a simple tool to modify any and all "parameters" of the particle system as well as visually display the result in 'real time'. I remember seeing something like that but I cannot remember when or where... *sigh*