For years, the lingua franca for desktop computers was the Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, a.k.a. Basic. Essentially every PC had it, and just about anyone could learn to program ...

Early in BASIC's history, its creators, John Kemeny (left) and Thomas Kurtz (center) go over a program with a Dartmouth student Early in BASIC's history, its creators, John Kemeny (left) and Thomas ...

New research might widen access to learning computer programming. Source: skynesher/iStock It is routinely assumed that to be a computer programmer—to write code, in other words—you need to be good at ...

Learning a new language is no easy task, and for programming languages, it’s no simpler. There are many reasons people want to learn to code, with some doing it ultimately to start a new career and ...

BASIC creators John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. The mainframe isn’t the only technology hitting the ripe old age of 50 this year. On May 1st, the BASIC programming language, first developed by Dartmouth ...

I have a specific problem that needs a solution. While it would be possible to call in someone more knowledgeable, I think this is a good pretext to actually learn some programming myself. I have a ...

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 bought a ...

"In the years to come many voices will speak to you — voices that will clamor for your attention to tell you what it is that you should do with your life. Among these voices will be one — a voice ...

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 in a ...