BASIC

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To reach millions, Kemeny and Kurtz would clearly have to significantly lower the existing barriers to programming, barriers which were related not only to the esoterics of programming languages but also to the material nature of programming. The two began working with a team of undergraduates to develop the Dartmouth Timesharing System, and with it the BASIC programming language. They considered developing a subset of FORTRAN or Algol, but found these options unsuitable (Masterminds of Programming p. 79). As Kurtz told an interviewer, "we wanted ... to get away from the requirements that punched cards imposed on users, which was that things had to be on certain columns on the card." (Masterminds of Programming p. 81) They saw the value of an interactive time-sharing system for allowing users to quickly correct minor errors rather than coming back 24 hours later with a new stack of punched cards for their next scheduled batch job. They also relaxed some of the specific requirements that were tied to using keypunch machines and cards. Oddly enough, BASIC was so relaxed that spaces between tokens were optional in Dartmouth's versions of the language. Spaces were ignored, as Kurtz explains, because "some people, especially faculty members, couldn't type very well." (MoP p. 81) This aspect of Dartmouth BASIC was carried over onto the Commodore 64, as mentioned in the introduction.

−

BASIC was designed in other ways to help new programmers, with "error messages that were clear and friendly" and default options that would satisfy most users' needs (9). "If the expert needs something fancier," Kemeny and Kurtz declared, "let the expert do the extra work!" (11). Since BASIC was meant to be a true high-level language, programmers would not need any detailed knowledge of the specific hardware being used either. Programmers who invested time in learning BASIC could port most of their skills between platforms, allowing them to focus more on application than low-level hardware and growing the pool of potential coders.

+

BASIC was designed in other ways to help new programmers, with "error messages that were clear and friendly" and default options that would satisfy most users' needs (9). "If the expert needs something fancier," Kemeny and Kurtz declared, "let the expert do the extra work!" (11). Since BASIC was meant to be a true high-level language, programmers would not need any detailed knowledge of the specific hardware being used either. The initial idea, at least, was that programmers would not have to care about the computer that BASIC happened to be running on.

−

DTSS and the versions of BASIC that ran on it served almost all of the students at that college -- Kemeny stated in 1971 that 90% of seven classes of freshmen had received computer training. Access to Dartmouth's system extended to many other campuses, and it was not the only time-sharing system with BASIC. By 1965, General Electric -- on whose computers DTSS and the original BASIC ran -- was offering a commercial time-sharing service that included BASIC (Waldrop p. 292). Before the microcomputer revolution, other college and university students were taking required courses in computing using BASIC -- at NYU's business school, for instance. Even before the arrival of home computers with built-in BASIC, the language had extensive influence. And even before the microcomputer era and the full toppling of BASIC's Tower of Babel, the permissive attitude of Kemeny and Kurtz had led to many different implementations of BASIC for different systems. Writing in 1975, one author commented: "BASIC systems differ among themselves in much the same way that the English language as we know it differs among the English-speaking nations around the globe." (Mullish p. 6)

+

DTSS and the versions of BASIC that ran on it served almost all of the students at that college: Kemeny stated in 1971 that 90% of seven classes of freshmen had received computer training. Access to Dartmouth's system extended to many other campuses, and it was not the only time-sharing system with BASIC. By 1965, General Electric -- on whose computers DTSS and the original BASIC ran -- was offering a commercial time-sharing service that included BASIC (Waldrop p. 292). Before the microcomputer revolution, other college and university students were taking required courses in computing using BASIC -- at NYU's business school, for instance. Even before the arrival of home computers with built-in BASIC, the language had extensive influence. And even before the microcomputer era and the full toppling of BASIC's Tower of Babel, the permissive attitude of Kemeny and Kurtz had led to many different implementations of BASIC for different systems. Writing in 1975, one author commented: "BASIC systems differ among themselves in much the same way that the English language as we know it differs among the English-speaking nations around the globe." (Mullish p. 6) BASIC's openness and widespread adoption, combined with a lack of any enforced standard, meant that the language wasn't as independent of particular hardware as had been hoped.

−

While BASIC was a significant project at Dartmouth, it was only one part of the push to expand access to computing that resulted in DTSS, allowed sites all around the East Coast to connect to Dartmouth's computers, and fostered a more productive and creative relationship to computing. In his 1972 book ''Man and the Computer,'' Kemeny defends programming and playing games and other "recreational" uses of the computer as important, writing that such activities are relaxing and help people to overcome their fear of computers (p. 35). Kemeny also describes some of the context in which BASIC programming was done at Dartmouth: "The computation center is run in a manner analogous to Dartmouth's million-volume open-stack library. Just as any student may go in and browse the library or check out any book he wishes without asking for permission or explaining why he wants that particular book, he may use the computation center without asking permission or explaining why he is running a particular program." (Man and the Computer p. 33) It was not only the BASIC programming language, but also the development of this permissive attitude toward computing that allowed for programs with no obvious military, business, or scientific purpose -- such as 10 PRINT -- to come about.

+

While BASIC was a significant project at Dartmouth, it was only one part of the push to expand access to computing that resulted in DTSS, allowed sites all around the East Coast to connect to Dartmouth's computers, and fostered a more productive and creative relationship to computing. In his 1972 book ''Man and the Computer,'' Kemeny defends programming and playing games and other "recreational" uses of the computer as important, writing that such activities are relaxing and help people to overcome their fear of computers (p. 35). Kemeny also describes some of the context in which BASIC programming was done at Dartmouth: "The computation center is run in a manner analogous to Dartmouth's million-volume open-stack library. Just as any student may go in and browse the library or check out any book he wishes without asking for permission or explaining why he wants that particular book, he may use the computation center without asking permission or explaining why he is running a particular program." (Man and the Computer p. 33) It was not only the BASIC programming language, but also the development of this permissive attitude toward computing that allowed for programs with no obvious military, business, or scientific purpose -- programs such as 10 PRINT -- to come about.

−

It's remarkable that Kemeny was able to further his liberal ideas about computers and education from the position he attained in 1970: President of Dartmouth College. He served in that role until 1981, presiding over Dartmouth's conversion to a coeducational campus, removing the "Indian" as the college's mascot, and encouraging efforts at the recruitment of minority students. On his final day as president, he gave a commencement address that warned students, including those involved in the recently-founded conservative ''Dartmouth Review,'' against the impulse that "tries to divide us by setting whites against blacks, by setting Christians against Jews, by setting men against women. And if it succeeds in dividing us from our fellow beings, it will impose its evil will upon a fragmented society" (Faison). After leaving the presidency of Dartmouth, he returned to full-time teaching. He died in 1992. Thomas Kurtz continued to teach at Dartmouth, directing the Computer and Information Systems program there from 1980 to 1988.

+

It's remarkable that Kemeny was able to further his liberal ideas about computers and education from the position he attained in 1970: President of Dartmouth College. He served in that role until 1981, presiding over Dartmouth's conversion to a coeducational campus, removing the "Indian" as the college's mascot, and encouraging efforts at the recruitment of minority students. On his final day as president, he gave a commencement address that warned students, including those involved in the recently-founded conservative ''Dartmouth Review,'' against the impulse that "tries to divide us by setting whites against blacks, by setting Christians against Jews, by setting men against women. And if it succeeds in dividing us from our fellow beings, it will impose its evil will upon a fragmented society" (Faison). After leaving the presidency of Dartmouth, he returned to full-time teaching. He died in 1992. Thomas Kurtz continued to teach at Dartmouth long after he worked on BASIC, directing the Computer and Information Systems program there from 1980 to 1988.

So, while home computing provides a significant context for the program at the center of our discussion, the computer had already become more welcoming and available for a wider variety of uses -- even before it moved into the home -- thanks in part to BASIC.

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@@ Line 47: / Line 47: @@
 To reach millions, Kemeny and Kurtz would clearly have to significantly lower the existing barriers to programming, barriers which were related not only to the esoterics of programming languages but also to the material nature of programming. The two began working with a team of undergraduates to develop the Dartmouth Timesharing System, and with it the BASIC programming language. They considered developing a subset of FORTRAN or Algol, but found these options unsuitable (Masterminds of Programming p. 79). As Kurtz told an interviewer, "we wanted ... to get away from the requirements that punched cards imposed on users, which was that things had to be on certain columns on the card." (Masterminds of Programming p. 81) They saw the value of an interactive time-sharing system for allowing users to quickly correct minor errors rather than coming back 24 hours later with a new stack of punched cards for their next scheduled batch job. They also relaxed some of the specific requirements that were tied to using keypunch machines and cards.  Oddly enough, BASIC was so relaxed that spaces between tokens were optional in Dartmouth's versions of the language. Spaces were ignored, as Kurtz explains, because "some people, especially faculty members, couldn't type very well." (MoP p. 81) This aspect of Dartmouth BASIC was carried over onto the Commodore 64, as mentioned in the introduction.
-BASIC was designed in other ways to help new programmers, with "error messages that were clear and friendly" and default options that would satisfy most users' needs (9). "If the expert needs something fancier," Kemeny and Kurtz declared, "let the expert do the extra work!" (11). Since BASIC was meant to be a true high-level language, programmers would not need any detailed knowledge of the specific hardware being used either. Programmers who invested time in learning BASIC could port most of their skills between platforms, allowing them to focus more on application than low-level hardware and growing the pool of potential coders.
+BASIC was designed in other ways to help new programmers, with "error messages that were clear and friendly" and default options that would satisfy most users' needs (9). "If the expert needs something fancier," Kemeny and Kurtz declared, "let the expert do the extra work!" (11). Since BASIC was meant to be a true high-level language, programmers would not need any detailed knowledge of the specific hardware being used either. The initial idea, at least, was that programmers would not have to care about the computer that BASIC happened to be running on.
-DTSS and the versions of BASIC that ran on it served almost all of the students at that college -- Kemeny stated in 1971 that 90% of seven classes of freshmen had received computer training. Access to Dartmouth's system extended to many other campuses, and it was not the only time-sharing system with BASIC. By 1965, General Electric -- on whose computers DTSS and the original BASIC ran -- was offering a commercial time-sharing service that included BASIC (Waldrop p. 292). Before the microcomputer revolution, other college and university students were taking required courses in computing using BASIC -- at NYU's business school, for instance. Even before the arrival of home computers with built-in BASIC, the language had extensive influence. And even before the microcomputer era and the full toppling of BASIC's Tower of Babel, the permissive attitude of Kemeny and Kurtz had led to many different implementations of BASIC for different systems. Writing in 1975, one author commented: "BASIC systems differ among themselves in much the same way that the English language as we know it differs among the English-speaking nations around the globe." (Mullish p. 6)
+DTSS and the versions of BASIC that ran on it served almost all of the students at that college: Kemeny stated in 1971 that 90% of seven classes of freshmen had received computer training. Access to Dartmouth's system extended to many other campuses, and it was not the only time-sharing system with BASIC. By 1965, General Electric -- on whose computers DTSS and the original BASIC ran -- was offering a commercial time-sharing service that included BASIC (Waldrop p. 292). Before the microcomputer revolution, other college and university students were taking required courses in computing using BASIC -- at NYU's business school, for instance. Even before the arrival of home computers with built-in BASIC, the language had extensive influence. And even before the microcomputer era and the full toppling of BASIC's Tower of Babel, the permissive attitude of Kemeny and Kurtz had led to many different implementations of BASIC for different systems. Writing in 1975, one author commented: "BASIC systems differ among themselves in much the same way that the English language as we know it differs among the English-speaking nations around the globe." (Mullish p. 6) BASIC's openness and widespread adoption, combined with a lack of any enforced standard, meant that the language wasn't as independent of particular hardware as had been hoped.
-While BASIC was a significant project at Dartmouth, it was only one part of the push to expand access to computing that resulted in DTSS, allowed sites all around the East Coast to connect to Dartmouth's computers, and fostered a more productive and creative relationship to computing. In his 1972 book ''Man and the Computer,'' Kemeny defends programming and playing games and other "recreational" uses of the computer as important, writing that such activities are relaxing and help people to overcome their fear of computers (p. 35). Kemeny also describes some of the context in which BASIC programming was done at Dartmouth: "The computation center is run in a manner analogous to Dartmouth's million-volume open-stack library. Just as any student may go in and browse the library or check out any book he wishes without asking for permission or explaining why he wants that particular book, he may use the computation center without asking permission or explaining why he is running a particular program." (Man and the Computer p. 33) It was not only the BASIC programming language, but also the development of this permissive attitude toward computing that allowed for programs with no obvious military, business, or scientific purpose -- such as 10 PRINT -- to come about.
+While BASIC was a significant project at Dartmouth, it was only one part of the push to expand access to computing that resulted in DTSS, allowed sites all around the East Coast to connect to Dartmouth's computers, and fostered a more productive and creative relationship to computing. In his 1972 book ''Man and the Computer,'' Kemeny defends programming and playing games and other "recreational" uses of the computer as important, writing that such activities are relaxing and help people to overcome their fear of computers (p. 35). Kemeny also describes some of the context in which BASIC programming was done at Dartmouth: "The computation center is run in a manner analogous to Dartmouth's million-volume open-stack library. Just as any student may go in and browse the library or check out any book he wishes without asking for permission or explaining why he wants that particular book, he may use the computation center without asking permission or explaining why he is running a particular program." (Man and the Computer p. 33) It was not only the BASIC programming language, but also the development of this permissive attitude toward computing that allowed for programs with no obvious military, business, or scientific purpose -- programs such as 10 PRINT -- to come about.
-It's remarkable that Kemeny was able to further his liberal ideas about computers and education from the position he attained in 1970: President of Dartmouth College. He served in that role until 1981, presiding over Dartmouth's conversion to a coeducational campus, removing the "Indian" as the college's mascot, and encouraging efforts at the recruitment of minority students. On his final day as president, he gave a commencement address that warned students, including those involved in the recently-founded conservative ''Dartmouth Review,'' against the impulse that "tries to divide us by setting whites against blacks, by setting Christians against Jews, by setting men against women. And if it succeeds in dividing us from our fellow beings, it will impose its evil will upon a fragmented society" (Faison). After leaving the presidency of Dartmouth, he returned to full-time teaching. He died in 1992. Thomas Kurtz continued to teach at Dartmouth, directing the Computer and Information Systems program there from 1980 to 1988.
+It's remarkable that Kemeny was able to further his liberal ideas about computers and education from the position he attained in 1970: President of Dartmouth College. He served in that role until 1981, presiding over Dartmouth's conversion to a coeducational campus, removing the "Indian" as the college's mascot, and encouraging efforts at the recruitment of minority students. On his final day as president, he gave a commencement address that warned students, including those involved in the recently-founded conservative ''Dartmouth Review,'' against the impulse that "tries to divide us by setting whites against blacks, by setting Christians against Jews, by setting men against women. And if it succeeds in dividing us from our fellow beings, it will impose its evil will upon a fragmented society" (Faison). After leaving the presidency of Dartmouth, he returned to full-time teaching. He died in 1992. Thomas Kurtz continued to teach at Dartmouth long after he worked on BASIC, directing the Computer and Information Systems program there from 1980 to 1988.
 So, while home computing provides a significant context for the program at the center of our discussion, the computer had already become more welcoming and available for a wider variety of uses -- even before it moved into the home -- thanks in part to BASIC.