The BASIC language is now 50 years old. TIME Magazine has a cool article on it and how it came to be.

When I started using computers, first with a ZX81 clone, then an Apple II clone, and then a MSX 1.0 clone, BASIC was the only thing that I knew exusted. It was synonym of computers for me, and for the longest time, the only programming language I knew as I didn’t even know other programming languages existed. I have very fond memories of the Usborne books and its little robots teaching me about arrays. I still remember very distinctly the moment I discovered sprites in Basic; you’d stop your program and the sprites would remain on screen, obscuring your code. I later fell in love with GWBasic, learned assembly through it, discovered how to better engineer programs with QBasic, and learned to create applications with QuickBasic. I’ve never owned an Amiga or a Commodore 64, but I remember finding old magazines dedicated to these platforms (with program sources) and dreaming of the possibilities. One of the reasons I learned English without consciously trying was spending so much time reading and re-reading those magazines. BASIC was the step stone to a dream world.

I’ve used C and Turbo Pascal at the same time I was learning GWBasic, and while those had their advantages – I especially liked Turbo Pascal for its speed – I kept coming back to QBasic just because things were so much easier and quicker. It remains as the only language or platform I’d do development and debugging with breakpoints and on-the-fly changes. The QuickBasic IDE had an awesome help system too, something that made me realize a good reference is fundamental for development and that you can’t know it all on the top of your head. For the longest time, it was the platform I knew and used the most, and that’s what I used even for large database merging when I started working professionally, even if faster runtimes existed: it was just much easier to tinker with. And despite what other well known names might think of the language, it was the gateway drug that took me to greener pastures. BASIC wasn’t perfect, but when used well (especially with QBasic/QuickBasic), it was beautiful. I think the same can be said of most programming languages or platforms.

I don’t think BASIC or any of its alternatives are the best language for first-time programmers anymore; I think Processing is a much better choice for a number of reasons. Still, the immediacy of BASIC is what got me interested in this whole game: I’m not sure I’d have felt the same way with some other platforms that required a massive bootstrap before I saw something on the screen.

So, thanks, BASIC.