BASIC

BASIC's invention in an educational context is significant. The language was developed for an early time-sharing environment, the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS). This revolutionary configuration allowed multiple programmers to use a single system at the same time. A system of this sort -- with many terminals connected to a mainframe or minicomputer -- differs considerably from the personally owned, relatively inexpensive, single-user computers of the microcomputer era. But in the early 1960s, the DTSS also distinguished itself from earlier systems that required the batch processing of stacks of punched cards. Time-sharing allowed people to engage with and explore computation in significant new ways, with what at the time felt like "real time" processing; BASIC was an important part of this computing revolution. Given the educational purpose of DTSS and BASIC, ease of use was paramount. And being easy to use helped lead to BASIC's massive popularity and success.

BASIC became even more influential as microcomputers entered people's homes. In 1975, the MITS Altair 8800 computer, widely acclaimed as the first home computer, became available. Perhaps the most significant piece of software for this system was Altair BASIC, an interpreter for the BASIC programming language that was the first product of a new partnership, Microsoft.

Thanks in large part to Microsoft, BASIC became the lingua franca of home computing. Microsoft's versions of the language were standard on many popular microcomputers, where they resided in ROM so that the computer could be turned on and immediately programmed. BASIC reigned in the late 1970s and through the early 1980s, when 10 PRINT and many other programs circulated on paper for users of all kinds to key in to their home computers. It was obvious at the time that BASIC was the canonical language -- so obvious that some books of BASIC programs do not even find it necessary to mention "BASIC" on their cover.

While the heyday of the language did not last, interesting new versions of BASIC, sometimes radically reformulated, continued to appear. The creators of the original language introduced the structured True BASIC in 1983. In 1985, Microsoft's QuickBASIC offered several innovations and made line numbers optional. Microsoft's even more radically different Visual Basic saw widespread use in creating business applications.

Despite or because of its ubiquity, BASIC has become a target of derision for many modern programmers. Inextricably associated with Microsoft and that bane of structured programmers, GOTO, the language has been said to encourage the writing of spaghetti code, to be unbearably slow, and to be suitable only for children and amateurs. Yet many programmers in the early twenty-first century remember BASIC fondly. The language was a popular success, worked well for small programs that let people explore the possibilities of computing, and fostered creativity and innovation by new categories of computer users.