As one of the programming languages, it is well known as a simple and easy-to-learn language. Originally, it is derived from the pronunciation of basic, an adjective form of the English word base, and according to the foreign word notation enacted in 1986, Basic is an accurate notation, but the notation Basic is overwhelmingly widely used in Korea. A programming language that many people remember if they were born in the 1970s and 1980s who had touched a computer when they were young.
Basic Language Overview
It is a fairly historic language developed in 1963 by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz of Dartmouth University. Originally designed as an interactive mainframe time-division language, it has become a widely used language by being employed in personal computers. It has the advantage of being able to learn easily because commands based on simple English phrases are used , and these days, most of them start with C or Java, or if you choose an easy language, it has faded from Python, but it is still a language that has maintained vitality with Microsoft’s push.
It is easy to learn and intuitive by employing a large number of commonly used English words. Therefore, there is an advantage that program production is very easy. In the early days of personal computers (1970s-1980s), when the commercial software market was too small, it was a useful tool for many users to create and write programs they needed. In addition, it was surprisingly profound, so as I made and learned the program, I was able to create a program with quite strong functions. Even today, macros and procedures for MS offices are created through VBA, a BASIC language, to help office users.
It is also famous for Microsoft’s beloved language. Although few people know it, Microsoft has bundled QBASIC from MS-DOS to Windows XP, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is all the power of Microsoft to maintain Basick’s vitality today. In other words, without MS, BASIC will be completely ruined.
Engineering calculators usually support Basik in programmable languages, leading to their lives. In particular, Texas Instruments. This company creates and uses a programming language for BASIC-based engineering calculators called TI-BASIC. Hewlett-Packard’s engineering calculator can also use BASIC, but there is no separate data set designated by HP, so the BASIC code for TI is used by Ctrl CV.
The decisive reason for Basick’s fall is that it is excellent for education, but its practical use rate is low and its productivity is low. It’s good to study, but there’s no place to study and use.
The “place to use” part of BASIC is never something to be overlooked. Microsoft switched Microsoft’s Visual Basic, which was popular and highly utilized until the late 1990s, to the basis of the .NET Framework in the early 2000s. The problem is that it caused a big backlash from existing users as it moved to Visual Basic.NET, which is incompatible with the previous version. Until now in 2020, the camps using the new VB.NET and the existing VB 6.0 are divided and are very hostile to each other. Even Microsoft’s headquarters has been pushed back by public opposition from the VB 6.0 camp, and VB is still in 2020.VB 6.0-based VBA is maintained without switching to all NET-based languages. The transition process to VB.NET was very poor, and Microsoft failed to appease the backlash from the VB 6.0 camp involved in the coercive transition. Microsoft had to replace it with an appropriate justification, but it failed to present a justification that users could understand. There was no obvious defect in VB 6.0.
Basic language details.
Today’s Basick range of use has been greatly reduced compared to the past, but in the 1980s, when 8-bit PCs were the mainstream of the market, most PCs were the basic language in which basic interpreters were included in ROM. Since it was a time when the concept of personal computers was just established, it was a reasonable policy to embed Basik, which is highly valuable for education, even if it is relatively not suitable for industrial use. Since it was natural that auxiliary memory devices such as floppy disk drives were for sale due to high cost, internal cut-type was so important that “all you can do is code something with only a computer body” in a basic way. It would be nice to say that it served as a kind of simple OS. In fact, the built-in Basick at the time also served as an OS in its own way because it had simple system control instructions. At that time, it was because it was the concept of “It is enough to be able to read OS= files, write files, and run programs.” In fact, there was no need for more functions.
Now, it is recognized by the general public that it is a personal computer = Internet machine, and until the mid-1990s, it was recognized as a PC (personal computer) = game machine, AHANGYUL word processor, or PC communication terminal, but in the 80s, Basik’s position was so strong that it was recognized as a personal computer = bay type machine. Among the 8-bit computers such as SPC-1000, SPC-1500, Venus Famicom series, MSX, and Apple II sold in Korea in the 1980s, none of them did not have Basick.
IBM PCs also initially had a structure in which the Lombay interpreter was booted without inserting an MS-DOS disk when booting. Cartridges to add Basic language to IBM PCjr were said to have been quite popular in the 1980s, and this was later embedded in Rom. Interestingly, in the case of early IBM PC compatible models, there were many users who wondered why BASIC suddenly appeared in boot error messages when MS-DOS could not be booted due to the absence of boot areas in the hard partition at the time of booting. As mentioned earlier, the original IBM PC (including some compatible models) had built-in Lombays and was supposed to enter Basic interpreter mode if booting failed with an external memory (floppy or hard), but most compatible models did not have Lombaysics due to licensing problems. Therefore, after failing to boot the DOS during the boot process, I checked to call the Lombaysik, and there was a message that the system was shut down because there was no such model. Later, it becomes common not to embed Basick, and afterwards, the message changes, so there is just a message that there is no operating system. Old programmer if you have ever used BASIC.COM and BASICA.COM (GWBASIC.EXE is not applicable!), which call basic interpreters stored in ROM.
It is an easy-to-learn, interactive language, so it is easy to modify the program, and it can be used even in small systems that do not necessarily require external memory devices, but the disadvantage is that the interpreter method translates one by one, that is, the processing speed is slow. Today, absolute computing power has become far more powerful, and various techniques have been incorporated into interpreters, making it not very slow compared to compiler methods, but Basick’s slow speed was an obstacle to using Basick as a professional development language in the 1980s. However, in the late 1980s, compiler-based Bayesics such as Turbo Bayesque and Quick Bayesque began to emerge, and today most of the compiler-based Bayesque languages. (If you don’t know what this means, refer to source code documents.)
In fact, there were quite a few games using Basick in the early days. Most of the game source codes submitted to various contests or computer magazines were based or combined with assembly or machine language codes only for parts that required some speed. There were quite a few games that used Basick in commercial games, and Ultima 1 of Apple II is representative. It is said that the PC-8801 edition of the Three Kingdoms 1, Nobunaga’s ambition, and Hyundai University Strategy [6) also contained Basic codes. Of course, as the game became increasingly complex and demanded speed, the Basic code began to be removed from the game.