BASIC
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| − | Unquestionably, an important aspect of 10 PRINT is that it is written in a particular programming language, BASIC, which itself has an interesting cultural and technical history. The first version of BASIC was developed by two professors for use in teaching in a liberal arts college; it became operational in 1964 and was freely shared by its creators, leading to its use in high schools among other contexts. By that time, general-purpose computers had been programmed for about two decades and high-level languages (of which BASIC is one example) had been in widespread use for a decade. While BASIC has distinguishing features, it also continues the history of high-level languages, particularly Fortran and Algol. | + | Unquestionably, an important aspect of 10 PRINT is that it is written in a particular programming language, BASIC, which itself has an interesting cultural and technical history. An acronym for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code," BASIC was developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, two professors at Dartmouth College; it became operational in 1964 and was freely shared by its creators, leading to its use in high schools among other contexts. By that time, general-purpose computers had been programmed for about two decades and high-level languages (of which BASIC is one example) had been in widespread use for a decade. While BASIC has distinguishing features, it also continues the history of high-level languages, particularly Fortran and Algol. |
BASIC's invention in an educational context signals one important aspects of its use. The language was developed for use in time-sharing environments - specifically, for use in the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System. This sort of setup was revolutionary in allowing many programmers to use a single system interactively at the same time. The configuration of such a system, with many terminals connected to a mainframe or minicomputer, was very different from that of the personally owned, inexpensive, single-user computers of the microcomputer era. It was also very different from the batch processing of jobs punched out on card, though. Time sharing allowed people to engage with and explore computation in significant new ways, and BASIC was an important part of this computing revolution. | BASIC's invention in an educational context signals one important aspects of its use. The language was developed for use in time-sharing environments - specifically, for use in the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System. This sort of setup was revolutionary in allowing many programmers to use a single system interactively at the same time. The configuration of such a system, with many terminals connected to a mainframe or minicomputer, was very different from that of the personally owned, inexpensive, single-user computers of the microcomputer era. It was also very different from the batch processing of jobs punched out on card, though. Time sharing allowed people to engage with and explore computation in significant new ways, and BASIC was an important part of this computing revolution. | ||
