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BASIC

BASIC is an acronym which stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

BASIC is the name given to a family of high-level programming languages that have developed from the original language that was designed in 1964.

The original Dartmouth BASIC was designed in 1964 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA to allow non-science students to write simple programs. In the early 1960s virtually all computers required custom software to be written for them. The coding was very mathematical and low level, therefore only the very mathematically minded could do it.

BASIC variants became widespread  in the late 1970s and 1980s. That was because most home computers had basic installed on them and enthusiasts loved writing programs for their machines. Versions of BASIC such as Apple BASICAtari BASIC, Commodore BASIC, Microsoft BASICBBC BASICTI-BASIC were used by children and adults sparking a love of computers within many that has never died out!

Nowadays BASIC program writing for a home computer requires the installation of a compiler program. See this link for the BBC Basic Compiler or click on the logo below to go to the FreeBASIC site

BASIC remains popular to this day in a handful of highly modified dialects and new languages influenced by BASIC such as Microsoft Visual Basic.