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5 definitions found From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Basic \Ba"sic\, a. 1. (Chem.) a Relating to a base; performing the office of a base in a salt. b Having the base in excess, or the amount of the base atomically greater than that of the acid, or exceeding in proportion that of the related neutral salt. c Apparently alkaline, as certain normal salts which exhibit alkaline reactions with test paper. 2. (Min.) Said of crystalline rocks which contain a relatively low percentage of silica, as basalt. {Basic salt} (Chem.), a salt formed from a base or hydroxide by the partial replacement of its hydrogen by a negative or acid element or radical. From WordNet r 1.6 [wn]: basic adj 1: pertaining to or constituting a base or basis; "a basic fact"; "the basic ingredients"; "basic changes in public opinion occur because of changes in priorities" [ant: {incidental}] 2: reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality; "a basic story line"; "a canonical syllable pattern" [syn: {canonic}, {canonical}] 3: of primary importance; "basic truths" [syn: {basal}, {primary}] 4: of elementary education; "a basal reader"; "children in the beginning reading classes"; "the primary grades" [syn: {abecedarian}, {basal}, {beginning(a)}, {primary}] 5: serving as a base or starting point; "a basic course in Russian"; "basic training for raw recruits"; "a set of basic tools"; "an introductory art course" [syn: {introductory}] 6: (chemistry) of or denoting or of the nature of or containing a base n 1: a popular programming language that is relatively easy to learn (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code); no longer in general use [syn: {BASIC}] 2: (usually plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is constant [syn: {staple}] From Jargon File (4.2.3, 23 NOV 2000) [jargon]: BASIC /bay'-sic/ n. A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another case (like {Pascal}) of the cascading {lossage} that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer a is very painful, and b encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential wizards. [1995: Some languages called `BASIC' aren't quite this nasty any more having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control structures and shed their line numbers. --ESR] Note: the name is commonly parsed as Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, but this is a {backronym}. BASIC was originally named Basic, simply because it was a simple and basic programming language. Because most programming language names were in fact acronyms, BASIC was often capitalized just out of habit or to be silly. No acronym for BASIC originally existed or was intended (as one can verify by reading texts through the early 1970s). Later around the mid-1970s, people began to make up backronyms for BASIC because they weren't sure Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code is the one that caught on From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (13 Mar 01) [foldoc]: BASICBeginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. A simple language designed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. It first ran on an {IBM 704} on 1964-05-01. It was designed for quick and easy programming by students and beginners. BASIC exists in many dialects, and is popular on {microcomputer}s with sound and graphics support. Most micro versions are interactive and interpreted, but the original Dartmouth BASIC was compiled. BASIC was originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental {time-sharing} system and has since become the leading cause of brain-damage in proto-hackers. This is another case (like {Pascal}) of the cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10--20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer is a very painful, and b encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros. As it is it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year. Originally, all references to code, both {GOTO} and GOSUB (subroutine call) referred to the destination by its line number. This allowed for very simple editing in the days before {text editor}s were considered an essential tool on every computer. Just typing the line number deleted the line and to edit a line you just typed the new line with the same number. Programs were typically numbered in steps of ten to allow for insertions. Later versions, such as {BASIC V}, allow {GOTO}-less {structured programming} with named procedures and functions, IF-THEN-ELSE-ENDIF constructs and {WHILE} loops etc Early BASICs had no graphic operations except with graphic characters. In the 1970s BASIC {interpreter}s became standard features in {mainframe}s and {minicomputer}s. Some versions included matrix operations as language primitives. A {public domain} {interpreter} for a mixture of {DEC}'s {MU-Basic} and {Microsoft Basic} is {here (ftp://oak.oakland.edu/pub/Unix-c/languages/basic/basic.tar-z)}. A {yacc} {parser} and {interpreter} were in the comp.sources.unix archives volume 2. See also {ANSI Minimal BASIC}, {bournebasic}, {bwBASIC}, {ubasic}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-03-15) From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms 13 March 2001 [vera]: BASIC Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
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