Basic

Updated: 08/02/2020 by Computer Hope

Basic may refer to any of the following:

1. The original BASIC was developed at Dartmouth College by John Kemeny, Mary Keller, and Thomas Kurtz and introduced on May 1, 1964. BASIC is short for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code and is an easy-to-understand programming language that was popular from 1970 to 1980. Today, BASIC is not used to develop programs, but is sometimes used to help teach the fundamentals of programming. Below is an example of a basic program that prints Hello World!.

10 print "Hello World!"
20 END

Although BASIC is not commonly used today, new variants of BASIC, such as Visual Basic, are still popular and widely used.

Note

Today, BASIC is often not written in all uppercase even though it is an acronym. Some believe that BASIC is a backronym. However, BASIC is described as an acronym in the A Manual for BASIC released on October 1, 1964.

2. In general, basic describes anything covering all the necessary facts or essentials required for a subject or skill. For example, anyone with a basic understanding of computers has a general understanding of how to use and operate a computer.

Altair BASIC, Computer acronyms, DarkBASIC, High-level language, Procedural language, Programming languages, Programming terms, ROM BASIC, True BASIC, Visual Basic