BASIC
From S23Wiki
Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
The original BASIC language was invented in 1963 by John Kemeny (1926–93) and Thomas Kurtz (1928–) at Dartmouth College and implemented by a team of Dartmouth students under their direction.
The language was based partly on FORTRAN II and partly on ALGOL 60.
In 1977, Microsoft (then only two people— Bill Gates and Paul Allen) released Altair BASIC. The version written for the Altair was co-authored by Gates, Allen and Monte Davidoff.
Versions then started appearing on other platforms under license, and millions of copies and variants were soon in use; it became one of the standard languages on the Apple II. By 1979, Microsoft was talking with several microcomputer vendors, including IBM, about licensing a BASIC interpreter for their computers. A version was included in the IBM PC ROM chips and PCs without hard disks automatically booted into BASIC.
Newer companies attempted to follow the successes of Altair, IMSAI, North Star and Apple, thus creating the home computer revolution; meanwhile, BASIC became a standard feature of all but a very few home computers. Most came with a BASIC interpreter in ROM, a feature pioneered by the Commodore PET in 1977. Soon there were many millions of machines running BASIC around the world, likely a far greater number than all the users of all other languages put together. Many programs, especially on the Apple II and IBM PC, depended on the presence of Microsoft's BASIC interpreter and would not run without it; in this way, Microsoft used its copyright licenses on its BASIC interpreter to gain leverage in negotiations with the computer vendors.
Wikipedia:BASIC_programming_language
Personally, i was raised on Commodore BASIC V2 by Microsoft ,running on the Commodore 64.
100 A$="ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! HIER SPRICHT DEIN COMPUTER!" 110 GOSUB 1000 120 PRINT 130 A$="IN MEINEM SPEICHER HAT SICH EIN BIT VERKLEMMT." 140 GOSUB 1000 150 PRINT 160 A$="BITTE DREH MICH UM UND KLOPF MIR AUF DEN RUECKEN!" 170 GOSUB 1000 180 PRINT 190 END 1000 FOR I=1 TO LEN(A$) 1010 PRINT MID$(A$,I,1); 1020 NEXT I 1030 RETURN
 | This is the JargonFile (V4.00) entry for BASIC - Next: batch, Prev: baroque |
| :BASIC: /bay-sic/ /n./ [acronym: Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code] A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouths experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has since become the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another case (like Pascal) of the cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldnt be so bad if historical accidents hadnt made BASIC so common on low-end micros. As it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year. [1995: Some languages called BASIC arent quite this nasty any more, having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control structures and shed their line numbers. --ESR] | |
| * (text is auto-included via JargonExtension by mutante using jargon with VERSION 4.0.0, 24 JUL 1996 - JargonFile by Eric S. Raymond is in the public domain) | |
