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BASIC

BASIC (the acronym stood for ‘Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code’) was the most common and popular computer programming language during the rise of the home computer in the late ’70s and early ’80s. It was simple and clunky, but effective, and, most importantly, quite easy to learn. When schools started teaching Computer Studies around that time, the lessons centred around programming in BASIC.

The language relied upon a range of instructions, many of which were written in longhand and would have made sense to even the most computer-illiterate user. For example, here is a BASIC program that most people will be able to work out.

10 PRINT “21st Century Dodos”

20 GOTO 10

RUN

If you were to type those lines into your Vic 20 or ZX Spectrum, your screen would be filled with the title of this book over and over again. What fun.

You could, of course, tackle more complex programs, and some of the most popular text adventure games of the time were entirely written in BASIC. However, for more serious gaming you needed specialised code, and as home computing became more about managing fictional football teams and running around tombs with unfeasibly breasted women, and less about two oblongs playing tennis, BASIC became a thing of the past.

At least, it did in its original guise. Ever evolving, BASIC has morphed and changed and can still be seen in the form of Microsoft Visual Basic, which remains a popular language for programmers.

Well, I say popular; it drives a lot of them mad, but it is still around.

Not quite extinct yet.

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