The Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (later Corporation ), most commonly known as MECC , was an organization founded in 1973 best known for developing the edutainment video game series The Oregon Trail and its spinoffs. The goal of the organization was to coordinate and provide computer services to schools in the state of Minnesota ; however, its software eventually became popular in schools around the world. MECC had its headquarters in the Brookdale Corporate Center in Brooklyn Center , Minnesota. It was acquired by SoftKey in 1995 and was shut down in 1999.
86-815: During the 1960s, Minnesota was a center of computer technology, what City Pages would describe 50 years later as a "Midwestern Silicon Valley ". IBM , Honeywell , Control Data and other companies had facilities in the state. In 1963, their presence inspired a group of teachers at the University of Minnesota College of Education 's laboratory school to introduce computers into classrooms via teleprinters and time-sharing . The group began with long-distance calls to Dartmouth College 's General Electric computer to use John George Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz 's new Dartmouth BASIC language, then moved to Minneapolis -based Pillsbury Company 's own GE computer. In 1968, 20 Minneapolis-Saint Paul area school districts and
172-435: A ROM cartridge. BASIC declined in popularity in the 1990s, as more powerful microcomputers came to market and programming languages with advanced features (such as Pascal and C ) became tenable on such computers. By then, most nontechnical personal computer users relied on pre-written applications rather than writing their own programs. In 1991, Microsoft released Visual Basic , combining an updated version of BASIC with
258-523: A sigil , and values are often identified as strings by being delimited by "double quotation marks". Arrays in BASIC could contain integers, floating point or string variables. Some dialects of BASIC supported matrices and matrix operations , which can be used to solve sets of simultaneous linear algebraic equations. These dialects would directly support matrix operations such as assignment, addition, multiplication (of compatible matrix types), and evaluation of
344-535: A visual forms builder . This reignited use of the language and "VB" remains a major programming language in the form of VB.NET , while a hobbyist scene for BASIC more broadly continues to exist. John G. Kemeny was the chairman of the Dartmouth College Mathematics Department. Based largely on his reputation as an innovator in math teaching, in 1959 the college won an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award for $ 500,000 to build
430-764: A $ 300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation , which was used to purchase a GE-225 computer for processing, and a Datanet-30 realtime processor to handle the Teletype Model 33 teleprinters used for input and output. A team of a dozen undergraduates worked on the project for about a year, writing both the DTSS system and the BASIC compiler. The first version BASIC language was released on 1 May 1964. Initially, BASIC concentrated on supporting straightforward mathematical work, with matrix arithmetic support from its initial implementation as
516-677: A BASIC for the PDP-8 , which was a major success in the education market. By the early 1970s, FOCAL and JOSS had been forgotten and BASIC had become almost universal in the minicomputer market. DEC would go on to introduce their updated version, BASIC-PLUS , for use on the RSTS/E time-sharing operating system. During this period a number of simple text-based games were written in BASIC, most notably Mike Mayfield's Star Trek . David Ahl collected these, some ported from FOCAL, and published them in an educational newsletter he compiled. He later collected
602-475: A batch language, and character string functionality being added by 1965. Usage in the university rapidly expanded, requiring the main CPU to be replaced by a GE-235, and still later by a GE-635. By the early 1970s there were hundreds of terminals connected to the machines at Dartmouth, some of them remotely. Wanting use of the language to become widespread, its designers made the compiler available free of charge. In
688-466: A determinant. Many microcomputer BASICs did not support this data type; matrix operations were still possible, but had to be programmed explicitly on array elements. New BASIC programmers on a home computer might start with a simple program, perhaps using the language's PRINT statement to display a message on the screen; a well-known and often-replicated example is Kernighan and Ritchie 's "Hello, World!" program : An infinite loop could be used to fill
774-410: A loop: DO 100 , I = 1 , 10 , 2 . Is it '1, 10, 2' or '1, 2, 10', and is the comma after the line number required or not?" Moreover, the lack of any sort of immediate feedback was a key problem; the machines of the era used batch processing and took a long time to complete a run of a program. While Kurtz was visiting MIT , John McCarthy suggested that time-sharing offered a solution;
860-458: A machine capable of running between 16 and 32 users at the same time. The system, bundled as the HP 2000, was the first mini platform to offer time-sharing and was an immediate runaway success, catapulting HP to become the third-largest vendor in the minicomputer space, behind DEC and Data General (DG). DEC, the leader in the minicomputer space since the mid-1960s, had initially ignored BASIC. This
946-584: A monthly newspaper focused on the Twin Cities music scene. The first issue featured pop band The Cars on the cover. In October 1980, Sweet Potato went biweekly. On December 3, 1981, the newspaper went weekly and was renamed City Pages . City Pages competed for readership with the Twin Cities Reader until 1997, when Stern Publishing purchased City Pages in March and the Twin Cities Reader
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#17327830815411032-417: A new department building. Thomas E. Kurtz had joined the department in 1956, and from the 1960s Kemeny and Kurtz agreed on the need for programming literacy among students outside the traditional STEM fields. Kemeny later noted that "Our vision was that every student on campus should have access to a computer , and any faculty member should be able to use a computer in the classroom whenever appropriate. It
1118-433: A number of these into book form, 101 BASIC Computer Games , published in 1973. During the same period, Ahl was involved in the creation of a small computer for education use, an early personal computer . When management refused to support the concept, Ahl left DEC in 1974 to found the seminal computer magazine, Creative Computing . The book remained popular, and was re-published on several occasions. The introduction of
1204-401: A prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration", BASIC was one of the few languages that was both high-level enough to be usable by those without training and small enough to fit into the microcomputers of the day, making it the de facto standard programming language on early microcomputers. The first microcomputer version of BASIC
1290-473: A series of consolidations in the educational software market. Although MECC continued to develop software after its acquisition, including the successful Oregon Trail II in 1995, Softkey (then named The Learning Company) was acquired by Mattel in 1999 in what Businessweek called one of "the Worst Deals of All Time", leading to the a great deal of financial repercussions that year including closing
1376-529: A single educational computer center in the Minneapolis area was recommended for use by schools throughout the state (the University of Minnesota's MERITSS computer provided time-sharing services to its campuses and to state universities). MECC hoped that every Minnesota school, regardless of size, would have a terminal connected to the computer center. SUMITS, a UNIVAC 1110 mainframe was installed at
1462-463: A single machine could divide up its processing time among many users, giving them the illusion of having a (slow) computer to themselves. Small programs would return results in a few seconds. This led to increasing interest in a system using time-sharing and a new language specifically for use by non-STEM students. Kemeny wrote the first version of BASIC. The acronym BASIC comes from the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz. The new language
1548-406: A smaller introductory version with the initial releases of the machines and a Microsoft-based version introduced as interest in the platforms increased. As new companies entered the field, additional versions were added that subtly changed the BASIC family. The Atari 8-bit computers use the 8 KB Atari BASIC which is not derived from Microsoft BASIC. Sinclair BASIC was introduced in 1980 with
1634-766: A taxable, profit-making company, owned by the state of Minnesota but otherwise independent. By the 1985-1986 school year MECC offered more than 300 products and had about $ 7 million in annual sales. During its lifetime, the company produced a number of programs that have become well-known to American Generation X and Millennial students. Besides Oregon Trail , others were The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary , The Yukon Trail , The Amazon Trail , Odell Lake , Zoyon Patrol , Number Munchers , Word Munchers , Fraction Munchers , Super Munchers , Lemonade Stand , Spellevator , Storybook Weaver , My Own Stories , Museum Madness , Jenny's Journeys , and DinoPark Tycoon . The game Freedom! , which had
1720-562: A version of the MS code, or quickly introduced new models with it. Ohio Scientific's personal computers also joined this trend at that time. By 1978, MS BASIC was a de facto standard and practically every home computer of the 1980s included it in ROM . Upon boot, a BASIC interpreter in direct mode was presented. Commodore Business Machines includes Commodore BASIC , based on Microsoft BASIC. The Apple II and TRS-80 each have two versions of BASIC:
1806-561: A wide variety of Tiny BASICs with added features or other improvements, with versions from Tom Pittman and Li-Chen Wang becoming particularly well known. Micro-Soft, by this time Microsoft , ported their interpreter for the MOS 6502 , which quickly become one of the most popular microprocessors of the 8-bit era. When new microcomputers began to appear, notably the "1977 trinity" of the TRS-80 , Commodore PET and Apple II , they either included
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#17327830815411892-577: Is one of the languages that can be accessed by the 4Dos, 4NT, and Take Command enhanced shells. SaxBasic and WWB are also very similar to the Visual Basic line of Basic implementations. The pre-Office 97 macro language for Microsoft Word is known as WordBASIC . Excel 4 and 5 use Visual Basic itself as a macro language. Chipmunk Basic , an old-school interpreter similar to BASICs of the 1970s, is available for Linux , Microsoft Windows and macOS . The ubiquity of BASIC interpreters on personal computers
1978-496: Is very similar to VBA 6. The Host Explorer terminal emulator uses WWB as a macro language; or more recently the programme and the suite in which it is contained is programmable in an in-house Basic variant known as Hummingbird Basic. The VBScript variant is used for programming web content, Outlook 97, Internet Explorer, and the Windows Script Host. WSH also has a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) engine installed as
2064-588: The Apple II was chosen by MECC for state schools over other candidates, such as the Radio Shack TRS-80 ; the win was an important early deal in the history of Apple Inc. Any school in the state could buy Apple computers through MECC, which resold them at cost, without having to go through complex evaluation and purchasing procedures. Through what InfoWorld described as an "enviable showcase" for its products Apple sold more than 2,000 computers during
2150-511: The Apple Macintosh , while yab is a version of yaBasic optimized for BeOS , ZETA and Haiku . These later variations introduced many extensions, such as improved string manipulation and graphics support, access to the file system and additional data types . More important were the facilities for structured programming , including additional control structures and proper subroutines supporting local variables . However, by
2236-528: The BASIC language, both timesharing systems developed shared memory (MULTI) BASIC systems. Through this and less efficient methods, multiuser programs and chat systems appeared in addition to electronic mail and BBS programs; some of these were derived from MERITSS programs. While some of the ideas may have been derived from MERITSS, the multi programs were more efficient. The MERITSS chat program, even though it operated via fast access system files, could not match
2322-574: The IBM PC and the Macintosh . As the state of Minnesota did not have the capital to fund such plans, it spun off the company as a private corporation in 1991 to the venture capital fund North American Fund II for $ 5.25 million. An IPO followed in March 1994. In October 1995, the publicly traded company, with about $ 30 million in annual revenue—about one third from The Oregon Trail —was acquired by SoftKey for $ 370 million in stock as part of
2408-536: The Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo DSi called Petit Computer allows for programming in a slightly modified version of BASIC with DS button support. A version has also been released for Nintendo Switch , which has also been supplied a version of the Fuze Code System, a BASIC variant first implemented as a custom Raspberry Pi machine. Previously BASIC was made available on consoles as Family BASIC (for
2494-536: The Nintendo Famicom ) and PSX Chipmunk Basic (for the original PlayStation ), while yabasic was ported to the PlayStation 2 and FreeBASIC to the original Xbox . Variants of BASIC are available on graphing and otherwise programmable calculators made by Texas Instruments ( TI-BASIC ), HP ( HP BASIC ), Casio ( Casio BASIC ), and others. QBasic , a version of Microsoft QuickBASIC without
2580-569: The PDP-11 and Data General Nova in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hewlett-Packard produced an entire computer line for this method of operation, introducing the HP2000 series in the late 1960s and continuing sales into the 1980s. Many early video games trace their history to one of these versions of BASIC. The emergence of microcomputers in the mid-1970s led to the development of multiple BASIC dialects, including Microsoft BASIC in 1975. Due to
2666-951: The QB64 and FreeBASIC implementations. In 2013 a game written in QBasic and compiled with QB64 for modern computers entitled Black Annex was released on Steam . Blitz Basic , Dark Basic , SdlBasic , Super Game System Basic , PlayBASIC , CoolBasic , AllegroBASIC , ethosBASIC , GLBasic and Basic4GL further filled this demand, right up to the modern RCBasic , NaaLaa , AppGameKit , Monkey 2 and Cerberus-X . In 1991, Microsoft introduced Visual Basic , an evolutionary development of QuickBASIC . It included constructs from that language such as block-structured control statements, parameterized subroutines and optional static typing as well as object-oriented constructs from other languages such as "With" and "For Each". The language retained some compatibility with its predecessors, such as
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2752-491: The 1960s, software became a chargeable commodity; until then, it was provided without charge as a service with expensive computers, usually available only to lease. They also made it available to high schools in the Hanover, New Hampshire , area and regionally throughout New England on Teletype Model 33 and Model 35 teleprinter terminals connected to Dartmouth via dial-up phone lines, and they put considerable effort into promoting
2838-561: The BASIC language with a day of events on April 30, 2014. A short documentary film was produced for the event. Minimal versions of BASIC had only integer variables and one- or two-letter variable names, which minimized requirements of limited and expensive memory (RAM). More powerful versions had floating-point arithmetic, and variables could be labelled with names six or more characters long. There were some problems and restrictions in early implementations; for example, Applesoft BASIC allowed variable names to be several characters long, but only
2924-493: The College of Education founded Total Information for Educational Systems (TIES) to provide time-sharing service on a HP 2000 , training, and software. The presence of computer-company employees on many school boards accelerated TIES's expansion and helped make Minnesota a leader in computer-based education. TIES's success, and similar projects run by Minneapolis Public Schools and Minnesota State University, Mankato , led to
3010-508: The DO was instead indicated by the NEXT I . Likewise, the cryptic IF statement of Fortran, whose syntax matched a particular instruction of the machine on which it was originally written, became the simpler IF I = 5 THEN GOTO 100 . These changes made the language much less idiosyncratic while still having an overall structure and feel similar to the original FORTRAN. The project received
3096-497: The Dim keyword for declarations, "Gosub"/Return statements and optional line numbers which could be used to locate errors. An important driver for the development of Visual Basic was as the new macro language for Microsoft Excel , a spreadsheet program. To the surprise of many at Microsoft who still initially marketed it as a language for hobbyists, the language came into widespread use for small custom business applications shortly after
3182-470: The MECC facility at 1925 Sather, address later changed to 2520 Broadway Drive, next to Highway 280. A sturdy industrial building originally used for electrical maintenance, part of the building was already occupied by the University of Minnesota's Lauderdale computing facility. SUMITS was a batch processing system, however, not time-sharing, and its performance failed to meet the terms of the contract. In 1977 it
3268-782: The MECC offices in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota in October 1999. City Pages City Pages was an alternative newspaper serving the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area. It featured news , film , theatre and restaurant reviews and music criticism , available free every Wednesday. It ceased publication in 2020 due to a decline in ads and revenue related to the COVID-19 pandemic . On August 1, 1979, publishers Tom Bartel and Kristin Henning debuted Sweet Potato ,
3354-642: The Sinclair ZX80 , and was later extended for the Sinclair ZX81 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum . The BBC published BBC BASIC , developed by Acorn Computers , incorporates extra structured programming keywords and floating-point features. As the popularity of BASIC grew in this period, computer magazines published complete source code in BASIC for video games, utilities, and other programs. Given BASIC's straightforward nature, it
3440-403: The article prompted Microsoft to develop and release Small Basic ; it also inspired similar projects like Basic-256 and the web based Quite Basic. Dartmouth held a 50th anniversary celebration for BASIC on 1 May 2014. The pedagogical use of BASIC has been followed by other languages, such as Pascal , Java and particularly Python . Dartmouth College celebrated the 50th anniversary of
3526-505: The authors just fell into common traps and assumptions." In a 2016 interview with Vice , musician Har Mar Superstar criticized the paper for "trivializing my art by mentioning that I'm overweight and bald for no reason," saying the paper exhibited "really horrible writing and I guess bitter people." BASIC BASIC ( Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code ) is a family of general-purpose , high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version
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3612-461: The blink of an eye" even using a "slow" language, as long as large amounts of data were not involved. Many small business owners found they could create their own small, yet useful applications in a few evenings to meet their own specialized needs. Eventually, during the lengthy lifetime of VB3, knowledge of Visual Basic had become a marketable job skill. Microsoft also produced VBScript in 1996 and Visual Basic .NET in 2001. The latter has essentially
3698-515: The business-focused CP/M computers which soon became widespread in small business environments, Microsoft BASIC ( MBASIC ) was one of the leading applications. In 1978, David Lien published the first edition of The BASIC Handbook: An Encyclopedia of the BASIC Computer Language , documenting keywords across over 78 different computers. By 1981, the second edition documented keywords from over 250 different computers, showcasing
3784-765: The country with a combined circulation of 1.8 million and controlling a quarter of the weekly circulation of alternative weekly newspapers in North America. After the deal's completion, New Times took the Village Voice Media name. In September 2012, Village Voice Media executives Scott Tobias, Christine Brennan and Jeff Mars bought Village Voice Media's papers and associated web properties from its founders and formed Voice Media Group . Web editor Jeff Shaw, food columnist Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl , staff writers Jonathan Kaminsky and Jeff Severns Guntzel, among others, left in 2008. On May 6, 2015, City Pages
3870-489: The display with the message: Note that the END statement is optional and has no action in most dialects of BASIC. It was not always included, as is the case in this example. This same program can be modified to print a fixed number of messages using the common FOR...NEXT statement: Most home computers BASIC versions, such as MSX BASIC and GW-BASIC , supported simple data types, loop cycles, and arrays. The following example
3956-522: The efficiency of a MULTI chat program that copied the input/output into memory to be delivered to the user. The University of Minnesota Computer Center (UCC as it was called then) rejected implementing MULTI due to concerns about system stability. UCC tried to retrofit the MULTI-mail program for its own use because of the good user interface. It was not possible. They then tried again with an older fast access system file version, and while it worked, it
4042-453: The emerging field quickly followed suit; Tymshare introduced SUPER BASIC in 1968, CompuServe had a version on the DEC-10 at their launch in 1969, and by the early 1970s BASIC was largely universal on general-purpose mainframe computers . Even IBM eventually joined the club with the introduction of VS-BASIC in 1973. Although time-sharing services with BASIC were successful for a time,
4128-507: The events, nightclubs, bars and restaurants that were its chief advertisers and financial base. The publication has been criticized by Minneapolis City Council member Alondra Cano , who called a story about her "racist" and "sexist." In her 2015 memoir , musician Carrie Brownstein asserted sexism in the paper's music coverage in the '90s, citing City Pages among "a representative sample of journalism about Sleater-Kinney . Most of these articles are actually trying to be complementary —
4214-493: The explosive growth of the microcomputer era. When IBM was designing the IBM PC , they followed the paradigm of existing home computers in having a built-in BASIC interpreter. They sourced this from Microsoft – IBM Cassette BASIC – but Microsoft also produced several other versions of BASIC for MS-DOS / PC DOS including IBM Disk BASIC (BASIC D), IBM BASICA (BASIC A), GW-BASIC (a BASICA-compatible version that did not need IBM's ROM) and QBasic , all typically bundled with
4300-491: The final version 6.0 of the original Visual Basic ended on March 31, 2005, followed by extended support in March 2008. Owing to its persistent remaining popularity, third-party attempts to further support it exist. On February 2, 2017, Microsoft announced that development on VB.NET would no longer be in parallel with that of C#, and on March 11, 2020, it was announced that evolution of the VB.NET language had also concluded. Even so,
4386-406: The first microcomputers in the mid-1970s was the start of explosive growth for BASIC. It had the advantage that it was fairly well known to the young designers and computer hobbyists who took an interest in microcomputers, many of whom had seen BASIC on minis or mainframes. Despite Dijkstra 's famous judgement in 1975, "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had
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#17327830815414472-489: The first two were significant, thus it was possible to inadvertently write a program with variables "LOSS" and "LOAN", which would be treated as being the same; assigning a value to "LOAN" would silently overwrite the value intended as "LOSS". Keywords could not be used in variables in many early BASICs; "SCORE" would be interpreted as "SC" OR "E", where OR was a keyword. String variables are usually distinguished in many microcomputer dialects by having $ suffixed to their name as
4558-496: The following day, shuttering it immediately. Bartel and Henning left City Pages in the fall of 1997. Tom Bartel's brother Mark was named publisher after Bartel and Henning's departure. City Pages was one of seven alternative weeklies owned by Stern, including the Village Voice . On October 24, 2005, New Times Media announced a deal to acquire Village Voice Media, creating a chain of 17 (now 16) free weekly newspapers around
4644-685: The founding of MECC in 1973 by the state legislature . As a Joint Powers Authority , with the support of the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System , and the Minnesota Department of Education, MECC's role was to study and coordinate computer use in schools for both administrative and educational purposes. Schools, including the universities, had to get MECC's approval for most computing expenses, and were also its customers for computer-related services. After study of educational needs,
4730-880: The language was still supported. Many other BASIC dialects have also sprung up since 1990, including the open source QB64 and FreeBASIC , inspired by QBasic, and the Visual Basic-styled RapidQ , HBasic , Basic For Qt and Gambas . Modern commercial incarnations include PureBasic , PowerBASIC , Xojo , Monkey X and True BASIC (the direct successor to Dartmouth BASIC from a company controlled by Kurtz). Several web-based simple BASIC interpreters also now exist, including Microsoft's Small Basic and Google 's wwwBASIC. A number of compilers also exist that convert BASIC into JavaScript . such as NS Basic . Building from earlier efforts such as Mobile Basic , many dialects are now available for smartphones and tablets. On game consoles, an application for
4816-505: The language. How to design and implement a stripped-down version of an interpreter for the BASIC language was covered in articles by Allison in the first three quarterly issues of the People's Computer Company newsletter published in 1975 and implementations with source code published in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia: Running Light Without Overbyte . This led to
4902-514: The language. In the following years, as other dialects of BASIC appeared, Kemeny and Kurtz's original BASIC dialect became known as Dartmouth BASIC . New Hampshire recognized the accomplishment in 2019 when it erected a highway historical marker in Hanover describing the creation of "the first user-friendly programming language". The emergence of BASIC took place as part of a wider movement toward time-sharing systems. First conceptualized during
4988-568: The late 1950s, the idea became so dominant in the computer industry by the early 1960s that its proponents were speaking of a future in which users would "buy time on the computer much the same way that the average household buys power and water from utility companies". General Electric, having worked on the Dartmouth project, wrote their own underlying operating system and launched an online time-sharing system known as Mark I. It featured BASIC as one of its primary selling points. Other companies in
5074-403: The latter half of the 1980s, users were increasingly using pre-made applications written by others rather than learning programming themselves; while professional programmers now had a wide range of more advanced languages available on small computers. C and later C++ became the languages of choice for professional "shrink wrap" application development. A niche that BASIC continued to fill
5160-534: The linker to make EXE files, is present in the Windows NT and DOS- Windows 95 streams of operating systems and can be obtained for more recent releases like Windows 7 which do not have them. Prior to DOS 5, the Basic interpreter was GW-Basic . QuickBasic is part of a series of three languages issued by Microsoft for the home and office power user and small-scale professional development; QuickC and QuickPascal are
5246-695: The machine. In addition they produced the Microsoft BASIC Compiler aimed at professional programmers. Turbo Pascal -publisher Borland published Turbo Basic 1.0 in 1985 (successor versions are still being marketed under the name PowerBASIC ). On Unix-like systems, specialized implementations were created such as XBasic and X11-Basic . XBasic was ported to Microsoft Windows as XBLite , and cross-platform variants such as SmallBasic , yabasic , Bywater BASIC , nuBasic , MyBasic , Logic Basic , Liberty BASIC , and wxBasic emerged. FutureBASIC and Chipmunk Basic meanwhile targeted
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#17327830815415332-848: The next three years and more than 5,000 by 1983,, making MECC the company's largest reseller. In late 1981 MECC switched to a discount agreement for the Atari 8-bit computers , and distributed software through the Atari Program Exchange . The use of microcomputers quickly increased, with 85% of school districts using them by 1981 compared to 75% for time-sharing, and the Cyber 73 shut down in 1983. By then each Minnesota public school had an average of three to four computers, compared to only 20 Milwaukee elementary schools of 110 with computers. MECC offered computer training to teachers and administrators, and 10 consortium consultants traveled throughout
5418-585: The original 101 BASIC games converted into the Microsoft dialect and published it from Creative Computing as BASIC Computer Games . This book, and its sequels, provided hundreds of ready-to-go programs that could be easily converted to practically any BASIC-running platform. The book reached the stores in 1978, just as the home computer market was starting off, and it became the first million-selling computer book. Later packages, such as Learn to Program BASIC would also have gaming as an introductory focus. On
5504-446: The other two. For Windows 95 and 98, which do not have QBasic installed by default, they can be copied from the installation disc, which will have a set of directories for old and optional software; other missing commands like Exe2Bin and others are in these same directories. The various Microsoft, Lotus, and Corel office suites and related products are programmable with Visual Basic in one form or another, including LotusScript , which
5590-674: The phone lines were replaced with direct circuits to schools across the state. By 1982 MTS had more than 950 programs in its library. One of the most popular was The Oregon Trail , originally written for the Minneapolis Public Schools' computer. Programming was the largest single use for MTS, with up to 45% of the system used for one of almost one dozen computer languages. To support its larger number of users—70 to 80% of all Minnesota public schools in 1981, and available to 96% of Minnesota students from 7 am to 11 pm daily by 1982—primarily using programs written in
5676-516: The player try to escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad , was released in 1992 but pulled from the market in 1993 following complaints from parents about its classroom use. MECC was financially successful and dominated the market for Apple II software used within schools, but its management believed that the company needed more capital in order to compete for the home market and to develop software for other platforms, such as
5762-426: The release of VB version 3.0, which is widely considered the first relatively stable version. Microsoft also spun it off as Visual Basic for Applications and Embedded Visual Basic . While many advanced programmers still scoffed at its use, VB met the needs of small businesses efficiently as by that time, computers running Windows 3.1 had become fast enough that many business-related processes could be completed "in
5848-440: The same power as C# and Java but with syntax that reflects the original Basic language, and also features some cross-platform capability through implementations such as Mono-Basic . The IDE , with its event-driven GUI builder , was also influential on other rapid application development tools, most notably Borland Software 's Delphi for Object Pascal and its own descendants such as Lazarus . Mainstream support for
5934-580: The software. As control over computer resources moved to local levels within Minnesota, MECC's focus on selling software grew. Beginning in 1980 with the Iowa Department of Education , 5,000 school districts around the world purchased site licenses for MECC software. It distributed 250,000 copies of MECC software around the world by 1982, and the "Institutional Membership" business became so successful that state subsidies ended. In 1983 MECC became
6020-609: The state assisting school districts. MECC developed hundreds of microcomputer educational programs, many converted from the time-sharing original; by 1979 some MECC programs for the Apple II could be downloaded from the timesharing system. MECC distributed The Oregon Trail and others in its library to Minnesota schools for free, and charged others $ 10 to $ 20 for diskettes, each containing several programs. By July 1981 it had 29 software packages available. Projector slides, student worksheets , and other resources for teachers accompanied
6106-452: The third of the default engines along with VBScript, JScript, and the numerous proprietary or open source engines which can be installed like PerlScript , a couple of Rexx-based engines, Python, Ruby, Tcl, Delphi, XLNT, PHP, and others; meaning that the two versions of Basic can be used along with the other mentioned languages, as well as LotusScript, in a WSF file, through the component object model, and other WSH and VBA constructions. VBScript
6192-407: The tiny main memory available on these machines, often 4 KB, a variety of Tiny BASIC dialects were also created. BASIC was available for almost any system of the era, and became the de facto programming language for home computer systems that emerged in the late 1970s. These PCs almost always had a BASIC interpreter installed by default, often in the machine's firmware or sometimes on
6278-412: The widespread success predicted earlier was not to be. The emergence of minicomputers during the same period, and especially low-cost microcomputers in the mid-1970s, allowed anyone to purchase and run their own systems rather than buy online time which was typically billed at dollars per minute. BASIC, by its very nature of being small, was naturally suited to porting to the minicomputer market, which
6364-469: Was HP Time-Shared BASIC , which, like the original Dartmouth system, used two computers working together to implement a time-sharing system. The first, a low-end machine in the HP 2100 series, was used to control user input and save and load their programs to tape or disk. The other, a high-end version of the same underlying machine, ran the programs and generated output. For a cost of about $ 100,000, one could own
6450-407: Was a simple matter to type in the code from the magazine and execute the program. Different magazines were published featuring programs for specific computers, though some BASIC programs were considered universal and could be used in machines running any variant of BASIC (sometimes with minor adaptations). Many books of type-in programs were also available, and in particular, Ahl published versions of
6536-515: Was as simple as that." Kemeny and Kurtz had made two previous experiments with simplified languages, DARSIMCO (Dartmouth Simplified Code) and DOPE (Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment) . These did not progress past a single freshman class. New experiments using Fortran and ALGOL followed, but Kurtz concluded these languages were too tricky for what they desired. As Kurtz noted, Fortran had numerous oddly formed commands, notably an "almost impossible-to-memorize convention for specifying
6622-819: Was co-written by Bill Gates , Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff for their newly formed company, Micro-Soft. This was released by MITS in punch tape format for the Altair 8800 shortly after the machine itself, immediately cementing BASIC as the primary language of early microcomputers. Members of the Homebrew Computer Club began circulating copies of the program, causing Gates to write his Open Letter to Hobbyists , complaining about this early example of software piracy . Partially in response to Gates's letter, and partially to make an even smaller BASIC that would run usefully on 4 KB machines, Bob Albrecht urged Dennis Allison to write their own variation of
6708-647: Was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn. In addition to the programming language, Kemeny and Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS), which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs simultaneously on remote terminals. This general model became popular on minicomputer systems like
6794-542: Was due to their work with RAND Corporation , who had purchased a PDP-6 to run their JOSS language, which was conceptually very similar to BASIC. This led DEC to introduce a smaller, cleaned up version of JOSS known as FOCAL , which they heavily promoted in the late 1960s. However, with timesharing systems widely offering BASIC, and all of their competition in the minicomputer space doing the same, DEC's customers were clamoring for BASIC. After management repeatedly ignored their pleas, David H. Ahl took it upon himself to buy
6880-415: Was emerging at the same time as the time-sharing services. These machines had small main memory , perhaps as little as 4 KB in modern terminology, and lacked high-performance storage like hard drives that make compilers practical. On these systems, BASIC was normally implemented as an interpreter rather than a compiler due to its lower requirement for working memory. A particularly important example
6966-503: Was for hobbyist video game development , as game creation systems and readily available game engines were still in their infancy. The Atari ST had STOS BASIC while the Amiga had AMOS BASIC for this purpose. Microsoft first exhibited BASIC for game development with DONKEY.BAS for GW-BASIC , and later GORILLA.BAS and NIBBLES.BAS for QuickBASIC . QBasic maintained an active game development community, which helped later spawn
7052-419: Was heavily patterned on FORTRAN II; statements were one-to-a-line, numbers were used to indicate the target of loops and branches, and many of the commands were similar or identical to Fortran. However, the syntax was changed wherever it could be improved. For instance, the difficult to remember DO loop was replaced by the much easier to remember FOR I = 1 TO 10 STEP 2 , and the line number used in
7138-504: Was replaced with a Control Data Corporation Cyber 73 mainframe, known as the MECC Timesharing System (MTS). It became the largest such system for education in the world, with up to 448 simultaneous connections from up to 2000 terminals throughout the state, most of them Teletype Model 33 teleprinters, connected at 110 and 300 baud through telephones by using acoustically coupled modems . After several years most of
7224-443: Was sold to Star Tribune Media Co., publisher of the Minneapolis daily newspaper of the same name . Following the sale, Star Tribune Media Co. ceased publication of its competing publication, Vita.mn . On October 28, 2020, owner Star Tribune Media Co. said it would cease publication of City Pages immediately. The company said it could no longer sustain the newspaper after the coronavirus outbreak forced closings and downsizings of
7310-437: Was such that textbooks once included simple "Try It In BASIC" exercises that encouraged students to experiment with mathematical and computational concepts on classroom or home computers. Popular computer magazines of the day typically included type-in programs . Futurist and sci-fi writer David Brin mourned the loss of ubiquitous BASIC in a 2006 Salon article as have others who first used computers during this era. In turn,
7396-476: Was unreliable. After doing test runs with several other Universities mail programs, two developers at UCC implemented their own version, which also contained a message board feature, and was the campus wide e-mail solution for a couple of years. As MECC's Cyber 73 entered into service, microcomputers began to appear. In 1978 it appeared that features wished for in the classroom, such as a graphical display, were available. Through an evaluation and bidding process ,
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