BASIC is an instruction-oriented programming language. It was developed in 1964 by John G. Kemeny, Thomas E. Kurtz and Mary Kenneth Keller at the Dartmouth college first as education-oriented programming language and had in its form at that time not yet the characteristics of structured programming, but worked with line numbers and jump instructions (GOTO).

At the end of the 1980er and at the beginning of the 1990er a multiplicity of different BASIC dialects developed.

The acronym “BASIC” stands for “Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code”, which means “symbolic all-purpose programming language for beginners”. The acronym seen as a word also means “basic”.

This clearly shows the design goal: to create a simple programming language suitable for beginners. Except in some product names, the word “BASIC” is always written in capital letters.