BASIC

BASIC

Atari BASIC (1979) for Atari 8-bit computers
Paradigm	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]