BASIC

BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages designed to be easy to learn for beginners. It originated in 1964 at Dartmouth College, where John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz developed Dartmouth BASIC to give students access to computers regardless of their prior mathematics training. The language was designed to be interactive, forgiving, and easy to read, using a simple, line-oriented syntax and an interpreter on time-sharing systems.

During the 1970s and 1980s BASIC spread widely on microcomputers. Notable dialects included AppleSoft BASIC, Sinclair BASIC, and the Microsoft BASIC lineage (Altair BASIC, GW-BASIC, BASICA, QuickBASIC). These variants typically used line numbers, simple printing and input, and control structures like IF...THEN, FOR...NEXT, and GOTO. Early BASICs emphasized rapid program development and immediate feedback rather than large-scale software engineering.

As personal computing evolved, so did BASIC. Structured BASIC variants introduced procedures and functions, and in the 1990s Microsoft introduced Visual BASIC, later evolved into VB.NET, adding event-driven programming and a modern development environment. These successors broadened BASIC beyond quick-and-dirty scripts to more substantial applications, though many modern languages also reference BASIC in educational contexts.

Impact and legacy: BASIC played a decisive role in popularizing programming and computer literacy, particularly in schools and among hobbyists. Critics pointed to its tendency toward unstructured code in early forms. Nevertheless, its influence persists in education and in the continued availability of many BASIC dialects for retrocomputing, rapid application development, and scripting tasks.