The BASIC programming language turns 60 Easy-to-use language that drove Apple, TRS-80, IBM, and Commodore PCs debuted in 1964.

The history of basic computer programming languages dates back far. Learn more about the BASIC & C coding languages that got everything started.

Once upon a time, knowing how to use a computer was virtually synonymous with knowing how to program one. And the thing that made it possible was a programming language called BASIC.

Since the 1960s, BASIC has introduced countless beginners to computer programming. Here's how the language got started, the paths it cleared for Windows and Apple, and where you can still find it ...

In the 1980s and 1990s, BASIC was increasingly displaced by more powerful and structured programming languages such as Pascal, C and C++. Critics criticized the often confusing BASIC code.

The language that made that all possible. They called it the Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code— BASIC. Before BASIC, life in the computer programming world was complicated.

Nowadays, "basic" has a very different and derogatory Urban Dictionary-style meaning. Fifty years ago on this very day, however, it was the name given to a new computer-programming language born ...