It all began in 1964 at Dartmouth University, in New Hampshire, hence it is also known as Dartmouth BASIC, by John George Kemeny, Thomas Eugene Kurtz and Mary Kenneth Keller.
This programming languagewhich many consider the basis of current programming, which was developed based on FORTRAN II and Algol 60 with the aim of reducing the complexity of other programming languages of the time and making it appropriate in time-sharing systems, (share a resource concurrently with multiple users).
Because of this, the first device where BASIC was put into operation was the GE-265, a General Electric device that worked with multiple terminals together.
BASIC, a programming language for everyone
It was born with the objective of being a simple means of programming for students and teachers who were not in science, since most of the equipment of the time was used for this type of tasks.
The word BASIC is the acronym for Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, a programming language that is very easy to use and designed to democratize programming, hence its importance in the world of programming. computing, since it was the gateway for many users to become interested in application development.
Although BASIC stopped receiving updates in 1979, since its launch, many variants have since reached the market such as Commodore BASIC, Atari Basic, Ti-BASIC and Microsoft BASIC. The availability of BASIC in the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX and Commodore 64 among others, was one of the reasons why this language became so popular between the 80s and 90s and that, more and less, made their first steps in programming using BASIC.
But, in addition, it was also the language that was used in the Apple II and it was included in the ROM memory of the IBM PCs that worked through flexible disks, better known as 5 1/4 floppy disks.
BASIC lacked Graphic interfacelittle by little it was left out of the game, as Windows became popular, being Visual BASIC from Microsoft, who gave it a second life since it uses the structures, terms and functions of BASIC.
With the arrival of the .NET Framework, Visual BASIC became a programming language object orientedas well as C++, JAVA, Perl, Objective C and Python among many others.
Is it worth studying it?
Although the use of BASIC is practically extinct today, it is an ideal programming language to get started in these matters, since it allows you to learn the basic knowledge of programming.
Once mastered, if you really want to build a future as an application developer, Python It is one of the most popular and used languages, although not the only one.