Tech Talk: How BASIC gave Laymen Power
This article was first published by dmcityview.com On the list of ground-zero major benchmarks in computer history is Alan Turning, the man first conceived of algorithms who helped develop computer science with The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (famously created at Iowa State University) and the invention of readable programming code. Computer programmers celebrated one of these innovation’s 50-year birthday last week — the birth of “BASIC,” the programming language created by Dartmouth professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. As opposed to generational gadgets eventually retired to landfills across the globe, programming languages never die. BASIC, along with COBOL, FORTRAN and others, were invented decades before the Internet and are still used today. What sets BASIC apart, though, is that it changed computer programming from mainframes and punch cards to readable code requiring no advanced degree in mathematics to understand. BASIC computers were literally giant calculators th...