BASIC has its roots in academics, where it was intended to be an easy to use programming language for every student, even those outside the traditional STEM fields.

50 years ago today, the BASIC computer language was born as two math professors from Dartmouth College used it to help run the school's computer system for the first time.

The college's General Electric GE-225 mainframe started running a Basic compiler at 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964. The new language was simple enough to use, and powerful enough to make it desirable.

The first computer language I learned was BASIC, just like you, but the first computer I worked on was a mainframe through a Teletype terminal in classes at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley.

The language consists of just 15 keywords, but the IDE is surprisingly powerful to anyone who is just getting started. In fact, Small Basic allows third-party libraries to be plugged in for even ...