Thomas Kurtz

Co-inventor of BasicLanguage.

: BASIC was invented at Dartmouth College in 1964 to give students a simple programming language that was easy-to-learn. It turned out that easy-to-learn and use was also a good idea for faculty members, staff members, and everyone else. The official languages (then, Fortran and Algol; now, C, C++ and Java) were designed for professionals. There were very few choices for students, teachers, and others who didn't want to dedicate their lives to programming. Our programming language provided the solution and has played an important role in the field ever since. Even with all the new languages introduced since then, BASIC use continues to grow.