On May 1st, the BASIC programming language, first developed by Dartmouth College Professors Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny, celebrates 50 years. At the time, computers were highly serial.

Since the 1960s, BASIC has introduced countless beginners to computer programming. Here's how the language got started, the paths it cleared for Windows and Apple, and where you can still find it ...

It’s a language for noobs, sure, but back then most everyone was a noob. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, BASIC sent a shock wave through teenage tech culture.

Universities and the Future of Programming Languages Some universities haven’t stopped innovating when it comes to creating the languages themselves. Just over a decade ago, the Massachusetts ...

Ah yes, my first programming language on trash-80. I wouldn't go back tho. However, I would take Basic any day over Cobol. I'm getting really tired of migrating old code from the 70s. Same. I ...

BASIC wasn’t designed to change the world. “We were thinking only of Dartmouth,” says Kurtz, its surviving co-creator. (Kemeny died in 1992.) “We needed a language that could be ‘taught ...

Small Basic is a recent offering from Microsoft based on the venerable BASIC programming language and implemented with .NET. Designed for coding novices and children, the system is easy to learn ...

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 ...