| |
| | BASIC programming language - InformationBlast |
 | | BASIC's name, coined in classic, computer science tradition to produce a nice acronym, stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code,¹ tied to the name of an unpublished paper by the language's co-inventor, Thomas Kurtz (the name thus having no relation to C. Ogden's series"Basic English"). |
 | | The language was based partly on FORTRAN II and partly on ALGOL 60, with additions to make it suitable for timesharing and, later, matrix arithmetic. |
 | | Almost immediately after its release, computer professionals started deriding BASIC as too slow and too simple;² such elitism is a recurring theme in the computer industry. |
| www.informationblast.com /BASIC.html (2968 words) |
|