That was almost 50 years ago; since then, Microsoft has embraced open-source software. In recent years, Microsoft has started releasing some of its classic operating systems and programs as open ...

Did you know that, between 1976 and 1978, Microsoft developed its own version of the BASIC programming language? It was initially called Altair BASIC before becoming Microsoft BASIC, and it was ...

Sixty years ago, on May 1, 1964, at 4 am in the morning, a quiet revolution in computing began at Dartmouth College. That's when mathematicians John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz successfully ran the ...

Windows only: If you've never played around with programming before, this weekend is a perfect time to start. Small Basic is a recent offering from Microsoft based on the venerable BASIC programming ...

For years, the lingua franca for desktop computers was the Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, a.k.a. Basic. Essentially every PC had it, and just about anyone could learn to program ...

Computer coding ability has gotten especially hip recently. People who can’t code revere it as 21st century sorcery, while those who do it professionally are often driven to fits by it. And it was 50 ...

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 ...