BASIC



The original BASIC code was designed in 1963 by John George Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. BASIC stands for “Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code”. It was designed at Dartmouth, and later became know as Dartmouth BASIC. Kemeny and Kurtz had eight principles by which to design the BASIC code. These eight principles are:

They wanted… 1. It to be easy for beginners to use 2. A language that could be used for multiple purposes (before then, most languages had specific purposes) 3. The option to add advanced options for more experienced programmers while keeping it easy to use for beginners. 4. An interactive language 5. It to provide clear and friendly error messages that were easy to understand 6. It to respond quickly to small programs 7. It to not require extensive knowledge of computer hardware. 8. Shield the user from the operating system

It combined many languages such as FORTRAN II and ALGOL 60, with additions such as JOSS, CORC, and LISP. Using these eight principles, Kemeny and Kutz came up with the BASIC language. BASIC was initially for straightforward mathematical work. Full string functionality was added in 1965. BASIC was originally implemented on the GE-265 mainframe which supported multiple terminals. The designers offered the language for free, so that it would become widely used. Additional attempts to make it a more widespread language included making it available in High Schools in the Datmouth area, and a lot of effort to promote the language. It was used by a large variety of people, from high school students, college students, and the general public. Manufacturers began implementing BASIC code, too. IT was clear that BASIC was becoming widespread. However, more experienced programmers disliked the BASIC code. They said the GOTO function promoted poor programming practices, BASIC was too slow, and left out some of the more advanced features that appealed to experienced programmers. Many variations of BASIC were made including GW-BASIC, Apple BASIC, Microsoft BASIC, QuickBASIC, Applesoft BASIC, TI-BASIC, Atari BASIC, Visual BASIC, and many others. These are all very similar but have some minor differences.

Hello World!

In early versions of BASIC, lines of code started with a number (10, 20, 30, etc). In GW-BASIC, “Hello World!” would be written as:

10 PRINT “Hello World!” 20 END

GW-BASIC "Hello World!" code. In QuickBASIC, the code would look a bit more simplified:

PRINT “Hello World!”

These two variations of BASIC show the same program, but you can see how there were minor differences with each variation of BASIC.