Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

(basic)

A beginners programming language.

BASIC was developed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. As developed, it is a procedural language (i.e., lines of code are executed one after the other). It is also (as developed) an interpreted language which means that the program that interprets each line of code has to be in memory while the BASIC program is executing.

Newer versions of BASIC can be compiled; however, they still generally require a large standard library of routines to be included with the program being distributed.

More Information

• The BASIC Archives
• The (Funny) History of BASIC