Non-structured, later procedural, later object-oriented
Designed by
John G. Kemeny
Thomas E. Kurtz
First appeared
May 1, 1964; 60 years ago (1964-05-01)
Major implementations
Dartmouth BASIC
Tiny BASIC
Applesoft BASIC
Atari BASIC
Sinclair BASIC
Commodore BASIC
BBC BASIC
TI-BASIC
Casio BASIC
Microsoft BASIC
QB64
FreeBASIC
Liberty BASIC
PowerBASIC
QuickBASIC
Influenced by
ALGOL 60
FORTRAN II
JOSS
Influenced
COMAL
Visual Basic
Visual Basic .NET
GRASS
Xojo
BASIC Programming at Wikibooks
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)[1] is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn.
In addition to the programming language, Kemeny and Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS), which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs simultaneously on remote terminals. This general model became popular on minicomputer systems like the PDP-11 and Data General Nova in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hewlett-Packard produced an entire computer line for this method of operation, introducing the HP2000 series in the late 1960s and continuing sales into the 1980s. Many early video games trace their history to one of these versions of BASIC.
The emergence of microcomputers in the mid-1970s led to the development of multiple BASIC dialects, including Microsoft BASIC in 1975. Due to the tiny main memory available on these machines, often 4 KB, a variety of Tiny BASIC dialects were also created. BASIC was available for almost any system of the era, and became the de facto programming language for home computer systems that emerged in the late 1970s. These PCs almost always had a BASIC interpreter installed by default, often in the machine's firmware or sometimes on a ROM cartridge.
BASIC declined in popularity in the 1990s, as more powerful microcomputers came to market and programming languages with advanced features (such as Pascal and C) became tenable on such computers. By then, most nontechnical personal computer users relied on pre-written applications rather than writing their own programs. In 1991, Microsoft released Visual Basic, combining an updated version of BASIC with a visual forms builder. This reignited use of the language and "VB" remains a major programming language[2][3] in the form of VB.NET, while a hobbyist scene for BASIC more broadly continues to exist.[4][5]
^Kemeny, John G.; Kurtz, Thomas E. (1963). Basic: a manual for BASIC, the elementary algebraic language designed for use with the Dartmouth Time Sharing System(PDF) (1st ed.). Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Computation Center. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022.
^Ramel, David (February 12, 2019). "VB.NET Popularity Still Rising". Visual Studio Magazine. Retrieved March 28, 2023.
^Swersky, David (January 25, 2023). "40 most popular programming languages 2023: When and how to use them". Raygun. Retrieved March 25, 2023.
^Proven, Liam (March 28, 2023). "Nostalgic for VB? BASIC is anything but dead". The Register. Retrieved September 27, 2023.
^Boss, Chris (November 15, 2022). "BASIC is Not Dead. Time to Erase the Myths about Basic". Code Project. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
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