What is BASIC

Author: Chukwuemeka Ndefo
Blog: Programming Languages

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BASIC, short for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, is an early programming language that was designed to help non-technical users and students solve easy problems with a computer.

BASIC, short for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, is an early programming language that was designed to help non-technical users and students solve easy problems with a computer. With its simple commands and user-friendly syntax, BASIC remains one of the simplest languages developed for programming in the computer age.

Advantages of BASIC

One of the key advantages of BASIC is that it can be learned quickly. It removes the need for users to understand low-level code constructs or how the underlying computer hardware works. Furthermore, it is an interpreted language with individual lines of code executed in real time. For all these reasons, BASIC is easy to learn and use, even by non-technical users with little programming experience or a mathematical background.

In addition to ease of use, BASIC is a highly versatile language. It is also expandable, generates robust code and is interactive, making it suitable for developing a wide variety of applications -- both simple and complex. BASIC is also a good choice for teaching programming concepts to students since it is easy to learn. Another advantage of BASIC is that it is independent of both hardware and operating systems (OSes, which explains its rise in popularity among hardware developers for many years after its initial release.

BASIC's concepts and syntax have influenced many modern programming languages, including JavaPython, Pascal and Scala. Additionally, BASIC remains the foundation of Microsoft Visual Basic, an object-oriented programming language that remains a popular choice for programmers looking to build type-safe .NET apps, system applications, back-end programs and even chatbots.

 

Principles on which BASIC was designed

The BASIC language or BEGINNERS ALL PURPOSE SYMBOLIC INSTRUCTION CODE was designed based on eight principles:

  • It is very easy to learn for beginners
  • It is universally accepted
  • Extensibility of the language
  • Very Interactive
  • It takes short response times
  • It is Hardware independent
  • It is Operating system (OS) independent
  • It shows clear error messages

Raw initially utilised numbers toward the start of every guidance (or line) to let the PC know what request to handle the directions. Lines would be numbered as 10, 20, 30, and so on, which would permit extra guidelines to be put between orders later on if necessary. “GOTO” explanations empowered projects to return to prior directions during execution. For instance, line 230 of a BASIC program might have an “if” provision that advises the PC to bounce back to line 50, assuming a variable is under 10. This guidance could look something like this:

230 IF (N < 10) THEN GOTO 50

More present-day BASIC executions use “while circles,” which play out a progression of directions up to a specific case, is valid. More current BASIC improvement programming likewise upholds more information types, like numbers, strings, and clusters, for putting away factors and different information. While the principal BASIC advancement conditions were rigorously text-based, the present BASIC programming permits engineers to plan many of their projects outwardly, utilising a graphical UI. A portion of the more famous BASIC advancement programs utilised today incorporates REALbasic and Microsoft Visual Basic.

Commands and Technical lines in BASIC

There are many commands and technical lines in BASIC we should understand. These are as follows:

  • PRINT – This is used to print some words or lines
  • INPUT is used when a program needs to take a variable or a number from the user
  • END – It indicates that it is the last line of our program
  • IF – It is a clause here and used to jump back or forward in the program
  • FOR- For is used when we want something to be repeated repeatedly

 

QBASIC Installation on Windows

The quickest way to run BASIC program is through DOSBox.

 

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11 Comments

Thank you, this is so educative 😁💖💖💖💖😄😄😄🙂🙂😁😁😁
thank you sir
What a nice lecture on BASIC
Thank you sir
So educative
Make sense
Thank you Sir
GOOD WORK
This is educative
Thank you sir, for the lecture
Thank you sir, I like this
Thanks dir
Sir