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 Dartmouth College basement. Devised initially by a group of the school's undergraduates and professors, BASIC's initial academic purpose was simple: to enable time-sharing on Dartmouth computers with an easy-to-learn, English-based language. Programming itself hasgreatly evolved since, but our early memories of coding in BASIC are no less fond.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/01/b...50th-birthday/