Nowadays, "basic" has a very different and derogatory Urban Dictionary-style meaning. Fifty years ago on this very day, however, it was the name given to a new computer-programming language born in a ...

Fifty years ago this month, in 1964, a computer programming language winked to life that changed the course of a generation. While many would point to the rise of Unix and other ubiquitous programming ...

Microsoft called the code—written by the company’s founder, Bill Gates, and its second-ever employee, Ric Weiland—”one of the ...

Microsoft’s 6502 BASIC ran on the same CPU that powered the Apple II, Commodore 8-bit series, NES, and Atari 2600.

I was entering the miseries of seventh grade in the fall of 1980 when a friend dragged me into a dimly lit second-floor room. The school had recently installed a newfangled Commodore PET computer, a ...