Microsoft basic programming language software#
Many of the leading software developers and computer specialists of the modern age cut their teeth in this way, learning as they went about terms like INKEY$, PEEK and DEF FN.
Microsoft basic programming language code#
In spare rooms around the world, people discovered that entering the program code could create a functioning piece of software out of a previously blank screen. These were laboriously re-typed to create anything from a rudimentary graphics package to a Snake-style multi-level navigation game. In an age when personal computers were still evolving, and their use as leisure tools seemed rather exotic, a raft of magazines appeared on newsagent shelves packed with program code listings. It featured in iconic hardware like the BBC Micro, Apple II, and the ZX Spectrum, which famously emitted screeching sounds as program code was loaded in from a cassette. This combination of instinctive accessibility, powerful versatility, and a diminutive footprint made it popular with hardware developers, and BASIC became a staple inclusion on what would become the 1980s’ explosion in personal computing. Itself inspired by the FORTRAN programming language, BASIC adopted a one-instruction-per-line format, with Boolean instructions like IF and THEN.
Yet its simplicity inspired a small company called Microsoft to develop the high-level Microsoft BASIC language in the mid-1970s, using a tiny amount of RAM at a time when 4KB was often as much memory as a device could offer. A brief history lessonīASIC was developed at a time when computers occupied entire rooms, and the concept of a home computer would have seemed like science fiction. And arguably none of these other important programming languages have been as influential as Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, or BASIC, developed in the mid-1960s, and still cited as one of the most important programming languages ever devised. Every action a computer performs – from loading an operating system to supporting online gameplay – has been developed using one of a series of programming languages, designed to help man control and instruct machine. Computers are effectively binary switch detectors, differentiating between zeroes and ones while using this simple distinction to perform the varied wonders of today’s multimedia world. It’s easy to forget that everything you see and do on computers relies on a programming language.