So, as part of my punishment homework for an online C class, I have to write a program that solves this assignment: "Your application should read the four-digit integer entered by the user and ...

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.

Kemeny and Kurtz flipped the switch on the first BASIC program on May 1, 1964, at 4AM. Not long after, they made the language available for free to the larger computing community.

Courtesy Dartmouth Library 1964: In the predawn hours of May Day, two professors at Dartmouth College run the first program in their new language, Basic.

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 ...

50 years after Basic, most users still can't or won't program anything When Dartmouth College launched the Basic language 50 years ago, it enabled ordinary users to write code. Millions did.

This is why I’ve long argued that BASIC is the most consequential language in the history of computing. It’s a language for noobs, sure, but back then most everyone was a noob.

Microsoft's C# programming language has passed Visual Basic .NET on the TIOBE Index -- which measures language popularity -- and is even in the running for being named 'Programming Language of the ...