Long before you were picking up Python and JavaScript, in the predawn darkness of May 1, 1964, a modest but pivotal moment in computing history unfolded at Dartmouth College. Mathematicians John G.

Microsoft just open-sourced 6502 BASIC (BASIC M6502 8K VER 1.1) from 1978. The code powered the Commodore PET, VIC-20, and C64, and underlies Applesoft BASIC on Apple II. Download it on GitHub to run, ...

Surely BASIC is properly obsolete by now, right? Perhaps not. In addition to inspiring a large part of home computing today, BASIC is still very much alive today, even outside of retro computing.

For years, the lingua franca for desktop computers was the Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, a.k.a. Basic. Essentially every PC had it, and just about anyone could learn to program ...