Screenshot of Atari BASIC, an early BASIC language for small computers.

In computer programming, BASIC (an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code^[1]) refers to a family of high-level programming languages. The original BASIC was designed in 1963, by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College, to provide access for non-science students to computers. At the time, nearly all computer use required writing custom software, which was something only scientists and mathematicians tended to do. The language (in one variant or another) became widespread on microcomputers in the late 1970s and home computers in the 1980s, and remains popular to this day in a handful of heavily evolved dialects. The British American Security Information Council is a think-tank based in London and Washington DC. http://www. ... Image File history File links AtariBasicExample. ... ATARI BASIC was a ROM resident BASIC interpreter for the Atari 8-bit family of 6502-based home computers. ... “Programming” redirects here. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Backronym and Apronym (Discuss) Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and ABC, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced on the basis of this abbreviated written form. ... A high-level programming language is a programming language that, in comparison to low-level programming languages, may be more abstract, easier to use, or more portable across platforms. ... Dartmouth BASIC is the original version of the BASIC programming language. ... Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... John George Kemeny (Kemény János) (May 31, 1926–December 26, 1992), U.S. computer scientist and educator best known for co-developing the BASIC programming language in 1964 with Thomas Eugene Kurtz. ... Thomas Eugene Kurtz (born 1928), U.S. computer scientist; co-developed the BASIC programming language in 1963/64, together with John George Kemeny. ... Dartmouth College is a private, coeducational university located in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. Incorporated as Trustees of Dartmouth College,[6][7] it is a member of the Ivy League and one of the nine colonial colleges founded before the American Revolution. ... This article is about the profession. ... Leonhard Euler, considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and research is the field of mathematics. ... The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular microcomputers of its era, and is the best selling model of home computer of all time. ... Children playing on a Amstrad CPC 464 in the 1980s. ... A dialect of a programming language is a (relatively small) variation or extension of the language that does not change its intrinsic nature. ...

History

Prior to the mid-1960s, computers were extremely expensive tools used only for special-purpose tasks. A simple batch processing arrangement ran only a single "job" at a time, one after another. During the 1960s, however, faster and more affordable computers became available. With this extra processing power, computers would sometimes sit idle, without jobs to run. The tower of a personal computer. ... Insert non-formatted text hereBatch processing is the execution of a series of programs (jobs) on a computer without human interaction, when possible. ...

Programming languages in the batch programming era tended to be designed, like the machines on which they ran, for specific purposes (such as scientific formula calculations or business data processing or eventually for text editing). Since even the newer, less expensive machines were still major investments, there was strong tendency to consider efficiency to be the most important feature of a language. In general, these specialized languages were difficult to use and had widely disparate syntax. In mathematics and in the sciences, a formula is a concise way of expressing information symbolically (as in a mathematical or chemical formula), or a general relationship between quantities. ... Notepad is the standard text editor for Microsoft Windows A text editor is a piece of computer software for editing plain text. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ...

As prices decreased, the possibility of sharing computer access began to move from research labs to commercial use. Newer computer systems supported time-sharing, a system which allows multiple users or processes to use the CPU and memory. In such a system the operating system alternates between running processes, giving each one running time on the CPU before switching to another. The machines had become fast enough that most users could feel they had the machine all to themselves. In theory, timesharing reduced the cost of computing tremendously, as a single machine could be shared among (up to) hundreds of users. Alternate uses: see Timesharing Time-sharing is an approach to interactive computing in which a single computer is used to provide apparently simultaneous interactive general-purpose computing to multiple users by sharing processor time. ... CPU can stand for: in computing: Central processing unit in journalism: Commonwealth Press Union in law enforcement: Crime prevention unit in software: Critical patch update, a type of software patch distributed by Oracle Corporation in Macleans College is often known as Ash Lim. ... An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. ...

Early years — the mini computer era

The original BASIC language was designed in 1963 by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz and implemented by a team of Dartmouth students under their direction. BASIC was designed to allow students to write programs for the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System. It intended to address the complexity issues of older languages with a new language design specifically for the new class of users that time-sharing systems allowed — that is, a less technical user who did not have the mathematical background of the more traditional users and was not interested in acquiring it. Being able to use a computer to support teaching and research was quite attractive enough. In the following years, as other dialects of BASIC appeared, Kemeny and Kurtz' original BASIC dialect became known as Dartmouth BASIC. John George Kemeny (Kemény János) (May 31, 1926–December 26, 1992), U.S. computer scientist and educator best known for co-developing the BASIC programming language in 1964 with Thomas Eugene Kurtz. ... Thomas Eugene Kurtz (born 1928), U.S. computer scientist; co-developed the BASIC programming language in 1963/64, together with John George Kemeny. ... The Dartmouth Timesharing System, or DTSS for short, was the first large-scale time-sharing system to be implemented successfully. ... Dartmouth BASIC is the original version of the BASIC programming language. ...

The eight design principles of BASIC were:

1. Be easy for beginners to use.
2. Be a general-purpose programming language.
3. Allow advanced features to be added for experts (while keeping the language simple for beginners).
4. Be interactive.
5. Provide clear and friendly error messages.
6. Respond quickly for small programs.
7. Not require an understanding of computer hardware.
8. Shield the user from the operating system.

The language was based partly on FORTRAN II and partly on ALGOL 60, with additions to make it suitable for timesharing. (The features of other time-sharing systems such as JOSS and CORC, and to a lesser extent LISP, were also considered.) It had been preceded by other teaching-language experiments at Dartmouth such as the DARSIMCO (1956) and DOPE (1962 implementations of SAP and DART (1963) which was a simplified FORTRAN II). Initially, BASIC concentrated on supporting straightforward mathematical work, with matrix arithmetic support from its initial implementation as a batch language and full string functionality being added by 1965. BASIC was first implemented on the GE-265 mainframe which supported multiple terminals. Contrary to popular belief, it was a compiled language at the time of its introduction. It was also quite efficient, beating FORTRAN II and ALGOL 60 implementations on the 265 at several fairly computationally intensive programming problems such as numerical integration Simpson's Rule. General-purpose programming language or General purpose Softwares refers to a type software that is suitable for most ordinary computer applications. ... There are several conceptual views of interactivity, the most general being the contingency view. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Fortran (also FORTRAN) is a statically typed, compiled, programming language originally developed in the 1950s and still heavily used for scientific computing and numerical computation half a century later. ... ALGOL (short for ALGOrithmic Language) is a programming language originally developed in the mid 1950s which became the de facto standard way to report algorithms in print for almost the next 30 years. ... Joss may refer to: JOSS, a time-sharing programming language People Joss Ackland, British actor Joss Stone, British female soul singer Joss Whedon, television writer/producer Joss Supercar, an Australian-built automobile King Joss (also known as George) of the Duala people of Cameroon joss brazier, a fucking cunt In... For the square matrix section, see square matrix. ... The GE-200 series was a family of small mainframe computers of the 1960s, built by General Electric. ... For other uses, see Mainframe. ... A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system. ... A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler. ... The function f(x) (in blue) is approximated by a quadratic function P(x) (in red). ...

The designers of the language decided to make the compiler available without charge so that the language would become widespread. They also made it available to high schools in the Dartmouth area and put a considerable amount of effort into promoting the language. As a result, knowledge of BASIC became relatively widespread (for a computer language) and BASIC was implemented by a number of manufacturers, becoming fairly popular on newer minicomputers like the DEC PDP series and the Data General Nova. The BASIC language was also central to the HP Time-Shared BASIC system in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In these instances the language tended to be implemented as an interpreter, instead of (or in addition to) a compiler. Minicomputer (colloquially, mini) is a largely obsolete term for a class of multi-user computers which make up the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (traditionally, mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). ... The DEC logo Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. ... Programmed Data Processor (abbreviated PDP) was the name of a series of computers, several of them ground-breaking and very influential, made by Digital Equipment Corporation. ... Data General was one of the first minicomputer firms from the late 1960s. ... Data General SuperNova The Data General Nova was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by the United States company Data General starting in 1969. ... HP Time-Shared BASIC (HP TSB) was a computer system sold by the Hewlett-Packard Corporation in the late 1960s and 1970s based on their HP 2100 line of minicomputers. ... In computer science, an interpreter is a computer program that executes, or performs, instructions written in a computer programming language. ... A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler. ...

Several years after its release, highly-respected computer professionals, notably Edsger W. Dijkstra, expressed their opinions that the use of GOTO statements, which existed in many languages including BASIC, promoted poor programming practices.^[2] Some have also derided BASIC as too slow (most interpreted versions are slower than equivalent compiled versions) or too simple (many versions, especially for small computers left out important features and capabilities). Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (May 11, 1930 – August 6, 2002); IPA: ) was a Dutch computer scientist. ... GOTO is a statement found in many computer programming languages. ...

Explosive growth — the home computer era

Commodore BASIC V2.

Notwithstanding the language's use on several minicomputers, it was the introduction of the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer in 1975 that provided BASIC a path to universality. Most programming languages required more memory (and/or disk space) than were available on the small computers most users could afford. With the slow memory access that tapes provided and the lack of suitable text editors, a language like BASIC which could satisfy these constraints was attractive. BASIC also had the advantage that it was fairly well known to the young designers who took an interest in microcomputers. Kemeny and Kurtz's earlier proselytizing paid off in this respect. One of the first to appear for the 8080 machines like the Altair was Tiny BASIC, a simple BASIC implementation originally written by Dr. Li-Chen Wang, and then ported onto the Altair by Dennis Allison at the request of Bob Albrecht (who later founded Dr. Dobb's Journal). The Tiny BASIC design and the full source code were published in 1976 in DDJ. Screenshot of C64 startup screen & basic program - created to go with article This is a screenshot of copyrighted computer software. ... Screenshot of C64 startup screen & basic program - created to go with article This is a screenshot of copyrighted computer software. ... Commodore BASIC is the dialect of BASIC used in Commodore Internationals 8-bit home computer line, stretching from the PET of 1977 to the C128 of 1985. ... Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) was an Albuquerque, New Mexico company founded in 1968 by Ed Roberts. ... Altair 8800 Computer with 8 inch floppy disk system The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975, based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Sold as a kit through Popular Electronics magazine, the designers intended to sell only a few hundred to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold... The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular microcomputers of its era, and is the best selling model of home computer of all time. ... Tiny BASIC is a dialect of BASIC that can fit into as little as 2 or 3 KB of memory. ... Dr. Li-Chen Wang (1936 - ) wrote Palo Alto Tiny BASIC for Intel 8080-based microcomputers. ... Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia with the subtitle Running Light without Overbyte was the full title of the pioneer microcomputer hobbyist newsletter published from early 1976 by Bob Albrecht and Dennis Allisons Peoples Computer Company. ...

MSX BASIC version 3.0

In 1975, MITS released Altair BASIC, developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen as Micro-Soft. The first Altair version was co-written by Gates, Allen and Monte Davidoff. Versions of Microsoft BASIC soon started appearing on other platforms under license, and millions of copies and variants were soon in use; it became one of the standard languages on the Apple II (based on the quite different 6502 MPU). By 1979, Microsoft was talking with several microcomputer vendors, including IBM, about licensing a BASIC interpreter for their computers. A version was included in the IBM PC ROM chips and PCs without floppy disks automatically booted into BASIC just like many other small computers. Image File history File links Msxbasic. ... Image File history File links Msxbasic. ... MSX BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language. ... Altair BASIC, in its first incarnation, MITS 4K BASIC, was a true milestone in software history — the first programming language for the worlds first truly personal computer, the MITS Altair 8800. ... For other persons named Bill Gates, see Bill Gates (disambiguation). ... For other persons named Paul Allen, see Paul Allen (disambiguation). ... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), (founded 1975), headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, is the worlds largest software company (with over 50,000 employees in various countries, as of May 2004). ... Monte Davidoff (born 1956) is an American computer programmer. ... Microsoft BASIC is the foundation product of the Microsoft company. ... The 1977 Apple II, complete with integrated keyboard, color graphics, sound, a plastic case and eight expansion slots. ... International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. ... Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. ...

Newer companies attempted to follow the successes of MITS, IMSAI, North Star and Apple, thus creating a home computer industry; meanwhile, BASIC became a standard feature of all but a very few home computers. Most came with a BASIC interpreter in ROM, thus avoiding the unavailable, or too expensive, disk problem. Soon there were many millions of machines running BASIC variants around the world, likely a far greater number than all the users of all other languages put together. The IMSAI 8080 microcomputer, manufactured by IMS Associates, Inc. ... Polaris is not exactly at the celestial pole, as this time-exposure photo shows. ... Apple Inc. ... Children playing on a Amstrad CPC 464 in the 1980s. ...

There are more dialects of BASIC than there are of any other programming language. Most of the home computers of the 1980s had a ROM-resident BASIC interpreter. A dialect of a programming language is a (relatively small) variation or extension of the language that does not change its intrinsic nature. ... A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer. ... Children playing on a Amstrad CPC 464 in the 1980s. ... Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. ... In computer science, an interpreter is a computer program that executes, or performs, instructions written in a computer programming language. ...

The BBC published BBC BASIC, developed for them by Acorn Computers Ltd, incorporating many extra structuring keywords, as well as comprehensive and versatile direct access to the operating system. It also featured a fully integrated assembler. BBC BASIC was a very well-regarded dialect, and made the transition from the original BBC Micro computer to more than 30 other platforms. For other uses, see BBC (disambiguation). ... BBC BASIC was developed in 1981 as a native programming language for the MOS Technology 6502 based Acorn BBC Micro home/personal computer, mainly by Roger Wilson. ... Acorn Computers Ltd. ... The BBC Microcomputer System was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers Ltd for the BBC Computer Literacy Project operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation. ...

During this growth time for BASIC, many magazines were published such as Creative Computing Magazine that included complete source codes for games, utilities, and other programs. Given BASIC's straightforward nature, it was considered a simple matter to type in the code from the magazine and execute the program. Different magazines were published featuring programs for specific computers, though some BASIC programs were universal and could be input into any BASIC-using machine. A logical extension of the magazine idea was the publishing of BASIC source code in full-fledged books: probably the classic example was David Ahl's series of Basic Computer Games. [1] [2] [3] Creative Computing was one of the earliest magazines covering the personal computer revolution. ... A type-in program, or just type-in, is a computer program listing printed in a computer magazine or book, meant to be typed in by the reader in order to run the program on a computer. ... David H. Ahl is the founder of Creative Computing magazine. ...

Maturity — the personal computer era

GW-BASIC 3.22, shown here with the simple Hello world program

Microsoft MS-DOS QBASIC 1.1 opening screen

Many newer BASIC versions were created during this period. Microsoft sold several versions of BASIC for MS-DOS/PC-DOS including BASICA, GW-BASIC (a BASICA-compatible version that did not need IBM's ROM) and QuickBASIC. Turbo Pascal-publisher Borland published Turbo BASIC 1.0 in 1985 (successor versions are still being marketed by the original author under the name PowerBASIC). Image File history File links GW-BASIC 3. ... Image File history File links GW-BASIC 3. ... GW-BASIC 3. ... A hello world program is a computer program that prints out Hello, World! on a display device. ... This is a screenshot of copyrighted computer software. ... This is a screenshot of copyrighted computer software. ... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... IBM PC-DOS was one of the three major operating systems that dominated the personal computer market from about 1985 to 1995. ... Microsoft BASICA (short for Advanced BASIC) is a simple disk-based BASIC interpreter written by Microsoft for PC-DOS. BASICA allows use of the ROM-resident BASIC on the PC while DOS is loaded (the ROM BASIC itself runs when nothing is loaded when booting) and adds functionality such as... GW-BASIC (named after Greg Whitten, an early Microsoft employee and is known more affectionately as gee-whiz) was a dialect of BASIC developed by Microsoft, originally for Compaq. ... Microsoft QuickBASIC (also QB or sometimes, QBasic, which is also a different system) is an Integrated Development Environment (or IDE) and Compiler for the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. ... Borland Software Corporation is a software company headquartered in Austin, Texas. ... This article is about the Borland version of Turbo-Basic Turbo Basic XL - a dialect of BASIC for the Atari 8-bit family. ... PowerBASIC is a variant of the BASIC programming language. ...

These languages introduced many extensions to the original home computer BASIC, such as improved string manipulation and graphics support, access to the file system and additional data types. More important were the facilities for structured programming, including additional control structures and proper subroutines supporting local variables. String manipulation is the process in computer programming languages for handling, matching, parsing, searching or formatting of character strings. ... For library and office filing systems, see Library classification. ... On computer science, a datatype (often simply type) is a name or label for a set of values and some operations which can be performed on that set of values. ... Structured programming can be seen as a subset or subdiscipline of procedural programming, one of the major programming paradigms. ... Control Structures: In computer science, structured algorithms are built using control structures. ... In computer science, a subroutine (function, method, procedure, or subprogram) is a portion of code within a larger program, which performs a specific task and can be relatively independent of the remaining code. ... In computer science, a local variable is a variable that is given local scope. ...

However, by the latter half of the 1980s newer computers were far more capable with more resources. At the same time, computers had progressed from a hobbyist interest to tools used primarily for applications written by others, and programming became less important for most users. BASIC started to recede in importance, though numerous versions remained available. Compiled BASIC or CBASIC is still used in many IBM 4690 OS point of sale systems.

BASIC's fortunes reversed once again with the introduction of Visual Basic by Microsoft. It is somewhat difficult to consider this language to be BASIC, because of the major shift in its orientation towards an object-oriented and event-driven perspective. The only significant similarity to older BASIC dialects was familiar syntax. Syntax itself no longer "fully defined" the language, since much development was done using "drag and drop" methods without exposing all code for commonly-used objects such as buttons and scrollbars to the developer. While this could be considered an evolution of the language, few of the distinctive features of early Dartmouth BASIC, such as line numbers and the INPUT keyword, remain (although Visual Basic still uses INPUT to read data from files, and INPUTBOX is available for direct user input; line numbers can also optionally be used in all VB versions, even VB.NET, albeit they cannot be used in certain places, for instance before SUB). This article is about the Visual Basic language shipping with Microsoft Visual Studio 6. ... Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses objects and their interactions to design applications and computer programs. ... Event-driven programming is a computer programming paradigm. ... Dartmouth BASIC is the original version of the BASIC programming language. ... In computing, a line number is a way of specifying a point in a file by enumerating each line in the file by a number. ...

Ironically given the origin of BASIC as a "beginner's" language, and apparently even to the surprise of many at Microsoft who still initially marketed Visual Basic or "VB" as a language for hobbyists, the language had come into widespread use for small custom business applications shortly after the release of VB version 3.0, which is widely considered the first relatively stable version. While many advanced programmers still scoffed at its use, VB met the needs of small businesses efficiently wherever processing speed was less of a concern than easy development. (By that time, computers running Windows 3.1 had become fast enough that many business-related processes could be completed "in the blink of an eye" even using a "slow" language, as long as massive amounts of data were not involved.) Many small business owners found they could create their own small yet useful applications in a few evenings to meet their own specialized needs. Eventually, during the lengthy lifetime of VB3, knowledge of Visual Basic had become a marketable job skill.

Many BASIC dialects have also sprung up in the last few years, including Bywater BASIC and True BASIC (the direct successor to Dartmouth BASIC from a company controlled by Kurtz). Many other BASIC variants and adaptations have been written by hobbyists, equipment developers, and others, as it is a relatively simple language to develop translators for. An example of an open source interpreter, written in C, is MiniBasic. Bywater BASIC (aka bwBASIC) is a GPL BASIC interpreter by Ted A. Campbell for MS-DOS and POSIX. It supports a large set of the ANSI Standard for Minimal BASIC and a large subset of the ANSI Standard for Full BASIC. Bywater BASIC is implemented in C. It currently is... True BASIC is a variant of the BASIC programming language descended from Dartmouth BASIC – the original BASIC – invented by college professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz. ...

The ubiquity of BASIC interpreters on personal computers was such that textbooks once included simple "Try It In BASIC" exercises that encouraged students to experiment with mathematical and computational concepts on classroom or home computers. Futurist and sci-fi writer David Brin mourns the loss of ubiquitous BASIC in a recent Salon article.^[3] Glen David Brin, Ph. ...

Examples

A first program

New BASIC programmers on a home computer might start with a simple program similar to the Hello world program made famous by Kernighan and Ritchie. This generally involves a simple use of the language's PRINT statement to display the message (such as the programmer's name) to the screen. Often an infinite loop was used to fill the display with the message. A hello world program is a computer program that prints out Hello, World! on a display device. ... Indent style describes how different programmers use braces to denote blocks of code, most commonly in the C programming language and its decendants, as well as other programming languages that allow indenting. ... An infinite loop is a sequence of instructions in a computer program which loops endlessly, either due to the loop having no terminating condition or having one that can never be met. ...

 10 INPUT "What is your name: "; U$ 20 PRINT "Hello "; U$ 30 REM 40 INPUT "How many stars do you want: "; N 50 S$ = "" 60 FOR I = 1 TO N 70 LET S$ = S$ + "*" 80 NEXT I 90 PRINT S$ 100 REM 110 INPUT "Do you want more stars? "; A$ 120 IF LEN(A$) = 0 THEN 110 130 A$ = LEFT$(A$, 1) 140 IF A$ = "Y" OR A$ = "y" THEN 40 150 PRINT "Goodbye "; 160 FOR I = 1 TO 200 170 PRINT U$; " "; 180 NEXT I 190 PRINT 

Modern BASIC

"Modern" structured BASICs (for example QuickBASIC and PowerBASIC) support classic commands such as GOTO statements to varying degrees, while adding many more modern keywords. Microsoft QuickBASIC (also QB or sometimes, QBasic, which is also a different system) is an Integrated Development Environment (or IDE) and Compiler for the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. ... PowerBASIC is a compiler suite that compiles a dialect of the BASIC programming language with a syntax similar to that of GW Basic, QBasic, QuickBasic, PDS7 (Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System or QBX), and Turbo Basic. ...

The previous example in QuickBASIC: Microsoft QuickBASIC (also QB or sometimes, QBasic, which is also a different system) is an Integrated Development Environment (or IDE) and Compiler for the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. ...

 INPUT "What is your name"; UserName$ PRINT "Hello "; UserName$ DO INPUT "How many stars do you want"; NumStars Stars$ = "" Stars$ = REPEAT$("*", NumStars) ' <- ANSI BASIC ''--or--'' Stars$ = STRING$(NumStars, "*") ' <- MS BASIC PRINT Stars$ DO INPUT "Do you want more stars"; Answer$ LOOP UNTIL Answer$ <> "" Answer$ = LEFT$(Answer$, 1) LOOP WHILE UCASE$(Answer$) = "Y" PRINT "Goodbye "; FOR I = 1 TO 200 PRINT UserName$; " "; NEXT I PRINT 

See also

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Programming:BASIC

• List of BASIC dialects
• List of BASIC dialects by platform

Image File history File links Wikibooks-logo-en. ... Wikibooks logo Wikibooks, previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks, is a wiki for the creation of books. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with List of BASIC dialects by platform. ... List of BASIC dialects by platform: This is a list of dialects of the BASIC computer programming language, sorted into groups for better conceptual organization. ...

Notes

A backronym (or bacronym) is a phrase that is constructed after the fact from a previously existing abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. ... Edsger Dijkstra Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (Rotterdam, May 11, 1930 – Nuenen, August 6, 2002; IPA: ) was a Dutch computer scientist. ... GOTO is a statement found in many computer programming languages. ... In computer science and related disciplines, considered harmful is a phrase popularly used in the titles of diatribes and other critical essays. ... PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced pee el one) is an imperative computer programming language designed for scientific, engineering, and business applications. ... COBOL (pronounced //) is a Third-generation programming language, and one of the oldest programming languages still in active use. ... APL (for A Programming Language) is an array programming language based on a notation invented in 1957 by Kenneth E. Iverson while at Harvard University. ...

References

• (1964) A Manual for BASIC, the elementary algebraic language designed for use with the Dartmouth Time Sharing System. Dartmouth College Computation Center.  — The original Dartmouth BASIC manual.
• Lien, David A. (1986). The Basic Handbook: Encyclopedia of the BASIC Computer Language, 3rd ed., Compusoft Publishing. ISBN 0-932760-33-3.  — Documents dialect variations for over 250 versions of BASIC.
• Kemeny, John G.; Kurtz, Thomas E. (1985). Back To BASIC: The History, Corruption, and Future of the Language. Addison-Wesley, 141 pp. ISBN 0-201-13433-0. 
• Sammet, Jean E. (1969). Programming languages: History and fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 
• The Encyclopedia of Computer Languages. BASIC - Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Murdoch University.

Standards

• ANSI/ISO/IEC Standard for Minimal BASIC:
  • ANSI X3.60-1978 "FOR MINIMAL BASIC"
  • ISO/IEC 6373:1984 "DATA PROCESSING - PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES - MINIMAL BASIC"
• ANSI/ISO/IEC Standard for Full BASIC:
  • ANSI X3.113-1987 "PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES FULL BASIC"
  • ISO/IEC 10279:1991 "INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES - FULL BASIC"
• ANSI/ISO/IEC Addendum Defining Modules:
  • ANSI X3.113 INTERPRETATIONS-1992 "BASIC TECHNICAL INFORMATION BULLETIN # 1 INTERPRETATIONS OF ANSI 03.113-1987"
  • ISO/IEC 10279:1991/ Amd 1:1994 "MODULES AND SINGLE CHARACTER INPUT ENHANCEMENT"

External links

• Computer-Books.us Online BASIC books
• BASIC at the Open Directory Project
• More Basic Computer Games by David Ahl
• Big Computer Games by David Ahl