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 YEAR: 1983
 ITEM: Manual/User's Guide
 PUBLISHER: ICS
 COUNTRY: USA
 IN OUR COLLECTION: Yes
RARITY: Not rare   Click here for further information on our rarity scale Information on the rarity of this item is unknown.

School of Computer Training Series

 

This is the complete series set of the ICS School of Computer Training, Programming in Basic, series. BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasized ease of use. In 1964, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz designed the original BASIC language at Dartmouth College. They wanted to enable students in fields other than science and mathematics to use computers. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, which was something only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn.

In addition to the language itself, Kemeny and Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS), which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs at the same time. This general model became very popular on minicomputer systems like 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 into the 1980s. Many early video games origin can be attributed to one of these versions of BASIC.

The emergence of early microcomputers in the mid-1970s led to the development of the original Microsoft BASIC in 1975. Due to the tiny main memory available on these machines, usually 4 kB, a variety of Tiny BASIC dialects were also created. BASIC was available for almost any system of the era, and naturally became the leading programming language for the home computer systems that emerged in the late 1970s. These machines almost always had a BASIC installed by default, often in the machine's firmware or sometimes on a ROM cartridge.

BASIC fell from use during the later 1980s as newer machines with far greater capabilities came to market and other programming languages (such as Pascal and C) became tenable. In 1991, Microsoft released Visual Basic, combining a greatly updated version of BASIC with a visual forms builder. This reignited use of the language and "VB" remains a major programming language in the form of VB.NET.

The School of Computer Training covers everything you need to know about Programming in Basic in its 11 unit series. From The Magic of Computers to The System and the Software and Advanced Printing and Graphics Techniques this guide was the perfect for start for someone looking to get serious about mastering the BASIC program.






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