Here’s an interesting article on the history of BASIC.
And here’s a Hacker News thread about it as well:
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I don’t really have much time for people spend their time arguing about whether a hammer is better than a screwdriver, as it demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding for the purpose of tools in the first place.
At this point in time we have a very large selections of programming languages and techniques to choose from and yet the outcome in terms Total Cost of Ownership has not really improved at all. And the biggest effort in the software industry is rewriting software, just as it always has been, only now we have a more acceptable name for it - refactoring.
So apart from attracting a bigger audience into programming, I’d say BASIC has had minimal impact on the quality of the software written. Except maybe it helps us create the mess in a more efficient way.
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