Wednesday, May 1st, 2024 Sixty years of BASIC ==================== According to multiple sources, the BASIC programming language is 60 today. For me, it was the very first programming language I ever saw and even today it's together with Python, SQL and C# the language I use most. Yes, it's of course mostly because of my interest in 8-bit computers, but I also ocasionally type BASIC code for living, as the company in which I work has some core applications still in Microsoft Access 97. So I spent today about an hour reading in the S*BASIC reference book to commemorate the event. By the way, S*BASIC and its predecessor SuperBASIC, both running on Sinclair QL computers, are probably the best BASIC dialects I ever met. Because QL had a true multitasking OS right from the start, BASIC plays the same role as the shell on unix-like systems. It indeed is very interesting to use the familiar language but with literally hundreds of new keywords and more power. Keep BASIC alive!