Programming language · 1964

BASIC

Programming language for beginners, mainly using familiar English words or abbreviations of them.

1964First released

Dartmouth CollegeDeveloper

weakTyping

Influence

Replacedassembly for beginners on early microcomputers

Being replaced byPython as the common first language; Visual Basic for Windows apps

What is BASIC written in?

The Language Lineage dataset does not currently include compiler or runtime implementation relationships for BASIC. It may appear in influence relationships with other languages.

Quick Facts

Designed by: John George Kemeny
Developer: Thomas E. Kurtz and Mary Kenneth Keller
First released: 1964
Typing: weak
Filename extension: .bas

About BASIC

BASIC is a programming language for beginners, mainly using familiar English words or abbreviations of them. BASIC is executed directly by an interpreter. It supports imperative and procedural programming.

BASIC first appeared in 1964 and was designed by John George Kemeny at Dartmouth College. Its popularity peaked around 1985. BASIC keeps a steady, moderate following today.

How BASIC is implemented

BASIC is primarily implemented in FORTRAN / Assembly.

BASIC in the language family tree

BASIC drew on ideas from Fortran and ALGOL and went on to influence Visual Basic .NET.

Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata

Frequently Asked Questions

What languages influenced BASIC?

BASIC was influenced by Fortran, ALGOL among others. See the influence section above for the full list.

Which languages did BASIC influence?

BASIC influenced Visual Basic .NET among others.

When was BASIC first released?

BASIC was first released in 1964. It was designed by John George Kemeny.

Evidence Sources

Discover More

What are programming languages written in? BASIC in the language family tree Interactive programming language graph Languages BASIC influenced: Visual Basic .NET Languages that influenced BASIC: Fortran Languages that influenced BASIC: ALGOL

Embed this graph

Paste this iframe into any HTML page to show the BASIC relationship graph.

<iframe src="https://www.languagelineage.org/embed?lang=basic" width="100%" height="500" loading="lazy" style="border:0" title="BASIC relationship graph"></iframe>

Please attribute the visualization to Language Lineage and link to the BASIC source record. See the embed guide for parameters and sizing.

Spot something wrong?

Every fact on this page is meant to be checkable. If one is wrong, say so and it becomes a dataset change, not a patch to this page.

Explore BASIC in Graph →