Subject: Re: Basic History Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 12:49:59 -0500 From: KWM Organization: 0xC Newsgroups: comp.lang.basic.misc References: <5faljf$mlc@boursy.news.erols.com> joehen@pop.erols.com wrote: > > I was looking through your Newsgroup hoping to find a 'Brief History > of Basic'. I didn't see your FAQ set. > > I was trying to recollect the evolution from BASICA to George > Washington (?) Basic, to MSoft's QuickBasic and QBasic. Why does > MSoft have separate QuickBasic and QBasic forms (what is the > difference between QuickBASIC 1.00 and QBasic 1.1, for example) ? > What is the fundamental functional difference amongst all of these > variations ? > > Any help will be much appreciated ! > > joe The BASIC programming language was developed at Dartmouth College in the mid-1960's by professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, as a vehicle to be used to teach programming. Paul Allen and Bill Gates developed a version of BASIC for the Altair computer, being built by MITS of Albuquerque, NM, in the mid-1970's. Their first version of BASIC ran entirely in 4Kb of memory. By the late 1970's Microsoft (Allen and Gates company) was developing a version of BASIC for virtually every new personal computer, including Apple, Commodore, and Atari. BASICA was a version of BASIC written by Microsoft for IBM's PC in 1981. Compared to the first microSoft BASIC, BASICA required more than 40K of memory, and had part of the language written into the ROM of the computer. For IBM-compatible computers, microSoft developed GW-BASIC. MS-DOS 5.0 was released in June 1991 with the successor to GW-BASIC, called QBasic. QBasic is an interpreter that has a subset of the QuickBASIC compiler's keywords. In March 1982, IBM released the 1st BASIC compiler for the IBM PC, called BASCOM 1.0. It was written by microSoft for IBM, using code developed by Bill Gates, Greg Whitten, and others. Compilers for the AppleII, and CP/M computers had already been written by microSoft, but BASCOM 1.0 was the most powerful to date. In 1985, IBM released BASCOM 2.0, based on improvements made by microSoft. It included an ISAM file handler. When IBM released BASCOM 2.0, microSoft released essentially the same thing (but without the ISAM file handler) as QuickBASIC 1.0 at a list price of $99. In early 1986, microSoft released QuickBASIC 2.0. And in early 1987, they released QuickBASIC 3.0. By the time QuickBASIC 4.0 was announced in late 1987, hundreds of thousand's of copies of QuickBASIC were in use around the world. BASIC 6.0 was released in late 1987. Version 5.0 was never released. It also enabled the user to create programs for OS/2. QuickBASIC 4.5, was introduced in 1988 after BASIC 6.0. In late 1989, BASIC PDS (Professional Development System) 7.0 was released. Six months later, BASIC PDS 7.1 was released. The above details were gleaned from several BASIC books, including WINER.ZIP, available on my web page. I hope it helps. -- Kenneth W. Melvin email: kwmelvin@nr.infi.net http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/8823/index.html LinuX IS user friendly. It's just choosey about who its friends are.