Basic

BASIC stands for Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, a computer programming language known for its simplicity. Many college students are first taught BASIC before moving on to more complex languages like Fortran and C++. Thomas Kurtz, professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College, and John G. Kemeny, chairman of the mathematics department there, developed BASIC, which is one of the easiest high-level programming languages to learn. They created it so that students could write programs for the General Electric, or GE-225—a mainframe, timesharing computer system.

BASIC was first developed as a compiled language, one which is translated into machine language prior to execution. However, because BASIC was never copyrighted or patented, all sorts of variations cropped up, including versions that were interpreted, or translated into statements that executed individually. In the mid-1970s, Harvard student Bill Gates and Honeywell employee Paul Allen used an interpreted version of BASIC when they created a language for Altair, the world's first personal computer (PC). When Gates and Allen moved back to Seattle, the former grade school classmates began customizing BASIC for use with other platforms. Their efforts eventually led to the founding of Microsoft Corp.

Other early PC developers also preferred interpreted versions of BASIC, mainly because such versions allowed more computer memory to remain free. Computer manufacturers like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Digital Equipment Corp. used interpreted versions of BASIC in the read-only memory (ROM) of their machines. By the mid-1980s, technology companies including RadioShack Corp., Apple Computer Inc., and Intel Corp. had written their own versions of BASIC. In fact, hundreds of versions of the language were in existence. Although the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) started working on a standardized version of BASIC in 1974, it wasn't until Thomas Kurtz became chairman of ANSI in 1984 that work toward this end began in earnest. ANSI began circulating Standard BASIC in 1988.

Variations of BASIC are still widely used by companies such as Microsoft. For example, Visual BASIC, created in 1992, is an object-oriented language designed specifically for Microsoft Windows applications. Another Microsoft invention, QBASIC, acts as an interpreter between BASIC and both the DOS and Windows platforms. It replaced GW-BASIC, the interpreter used solely with the DOS operating system. However, computer companies are not the only ones that can tweak BASIC to meet their needs. Because the language is so easy to learn, several word processing and spreadsheet programs allow users to write simple programs or macros in BASIC to automate certain tasks.