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.

For years, the lingua franca for desktop computers was the Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, a.k.a. Basic. Essentially every PC had it, and just about anyone could learn to program ...

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 in a ...

60 years ago, the inventors of the BASIC programming language actually achieved what they had hoped for: simple programming that is accessible to everyone.

Computers speak binary—long strings of 1s and 0s that tell them what to do. Some people can speak binary, too. As the joke goes: "There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand ...