Basic programming language celebrates its 60th birthday

Basic is the abbreviation for "Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code". In other words, it is a general-purpose programming language for beginners. The inventors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz wanted to create an easy-to-learn language that is also suitable for things outside of university research.

That was 60 years ago. On 1 May 1964, the first Basic interpreter went into operation at Darthmouth College. On a mainframe computer, of course, as nothing else existed.

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But it took another 20 years before Basic reached its heyday. It was only with the advent of low-cost home computers that there was a great demand for a simple programming language. The C64 played an important role from 1982 onwards. Basic was not just a programming language, but the operating system. Not unusual for the time.

This means that everyone who had their first programming experience in the 80s has vivid memories of Basic. For me, it was the children's computer Basictutor that captivated me as an eleven-year-old, and later the Sharp PC-1403H programmable calculator.

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With the memories comes nostalgia and Basic is still alive in the hobby sector today. I started programming Basic again at the end of 2022 with a C64 replica. I enjoyed it just as much as I did in the 80s.

For smaller things like mathematical functions, Basic is well suited. But not at all for larger projects, as it is hardly possible to structure the code clearly. I realised this with my ambitious project to develop a graphical game for the C64.

Remarkable from today's perspective: There is no standardised Basic. There are actually hundreds of programming languages that all function similarly, but not in exactly the same way. Every manufacturer and sometimes even every device had its own Basic dialect. From the point of view of the time, this was logical, as it was hardly possible to transfer software to another type of computer anyway. People wrote their programmes themselves, for the respective device.

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