BASIC was conceived as a simplified, efficient, interactive equivalent to FORTRAN. Which is to say, it was extremely useful and effective! It met all of its design goals:
Simplified: novices could learn the language in an afternoon.
Efficient: the language was suitable for fast compilation (as in Dartmouth BASIC, where it compiled and executed the program when you typed "run") and efficient enough that a single 1960s minicomputer could support dozens of interactive BASIC users, and a simple BASIC interpreter could be implemented in a few kilobytes of memory on 1970s microcomputers.
Interactive: unlike typical batch FORTRAN environments in the 1960s with decks of punched cards, the BASIC environment supported interactive entry, editing, and debugging as well as interactive execution on a print or display terminal.
Equivalent to FORTRAN: Like FORTRAN, BASIC supported algebraic function entry, and was suitable for a wide range of programs. Dartmouth BASIC supported matrix operations for numerical computing as well as string functions for text processing.
> A triumphant report by Kemeny and Kurtz indicated that 80 percent of the three incoming first-year classes who had arrived since BASIC’s invention [1964] –would have learned about computers by writing and debugging their programs.
> “Anyone who tries to convince a Dartmouth undergraduate either that computers are to be feared or that they are of little use will be met with well-founded scorn,”
https://history-computer.com/software/basic-programming-lang...
BASIC was largely supplanted by other languages, but it continued to evolve into things like Visual BASIC, which became a popular rapid development environment for GUI apps. Modern BASICs support modules, objects, and other features that you might expect.
FORTRAN (now Fortran) has continued to evolve, and remains popular as a language for scientific and numerical computing, as it compiles into efficient code for CPUs and GPUs and scales from laptops to supercomputers.
Modern Fortran is pretty great in its specific area, and is barely recognizable as a descendant of the ancient Fortran.
But we’re talking about a language that originally had no named parameters in subroutine calls… and no variable scoping.
Basic almost makes assembly look good.
I think the pendulum had swung too far when Basic was created.
I think it made it harder to adapt to more modern languages, but at the same time I would have never been able to start with C.
I am self taugth and there were no C books around.
Come on, it was great for the home computers of that era. It is terrible today, but it was great 50 (!) years ago.
Much better than python. /s
Although those with machines powerful enough to run CP/M, and having disk drives, could enjoy the access to compilers.
Like the remarkable Turbo Pascal, which crammed a full IDE into 34KB.
JSR_FDED•4mo ago
musicale•4mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Ahl
joombaga•4mo ago