64 Chapter 2 Evolution of the Major Programming Languages
- It must allow free and private access.
- It must consider user time more important than computer time.
The last goal was indeed a revolutionary concept. It was based at least partly
on the belief that computers would become significantly cheaper as time went
on, which of course they did.
The combination of the second, third, and fourth goals led to the time-
shared aspect of BASIC. Only with individual access through terminals by
numerous simultaneous users could these goals be met in the early 1960s.
In the summer of 1963, Kemeny began work on the compiler for the first
version of BASIC, using remote access to a GE 225 computer. Design and
coding of the operating system for BASIC began in the fall of 1963. At 4:00
A.M. on May 1, 1964, the first program using the timeshared BASIC was typed
in and run. In June, the number of terminals on the system grew to 11, and by
the fall it had ballooned to 20.2.7.2 Language Overview
The original version of BASIC was very small and, oddly, was not interactive:
There was no way for an executing program to get input data from the user.
Programs were typed in, compiled, and run, in a sort of batch-oriented way.
The original BASIC had only 14 different statement types and a single data
type—floating-point. Because it was believed that few of the targeted users
would appreciate the difference between integer and floating-point types, the
type was referred to as “numbers.” Overall, it was a very limited language,
though quite easy to learn.2.7.3 Evaluation
The most important aspect of the original BASIC was that it was the first
widely used language that was used through terminals connected to a remote
computer.^7 Terminals had just begun to be available at that time. Before then,
most programs were entered into computers through either punched cards or
paper tape.
Much of the design of BASIC came from Fortran, with some minor influ-
ence from the syntax of ALGOL 60. Later, it grew in a variety of ways, with
little or no effort made to standardize it. The American National Standards
Institute issued a Minimal BASIC standard (ANSI, 1978b), but this represented
only the bare minimum of language features. In fact, the original BASIC was
very similar to Minimal BASIC.
Although it may seem surprising, Digital Equipment Corporation used a
rather elaborate version of BASIC named BASIC-PLUS to write significant- LISP initially was used through terminals, but it was not widely used in the early 1960s.