• Did you learn Basic?

    Reader RBalin gifts this article about someone who probably impact more lives than even Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Thomas Kurtz, Co-Creator of Computer Language Basic passed away. If you have ever programmed computers with punch cards you will also know the revolution that occurred when the Basic computer language came along and you could code and get real time results and not wait for your punched cards to be processed and your compiled project come back.

    Did you interact with Basic? Did it impact you?

    As the archives indicate….

    BASIC was invented at Dartmouth College in 1964 to give students a simple programming language that was easy-to-learn. It turned out that easy-to-learn and use was also a good idea for faculty members, staff members, and everyone else. The official languages (then, Fortran and Algol; now, C, C++ and Java) were designed for professionals. There were very few choices for students, teachers, and others who didn’t want to dedicate their lives to programming. Our programming language provided the solution and has played an important role in the field ever since. Even with all the new languages introduced since then, BASIC use continues to grow.