basic

basic
    adj 1: pertaining to or constituting a base or basis; "a basic
           fact"; "the basic ingredients"; "basic changes in public
           opinion occur because of changes in priorities" [ant:
           {incident}, {incidental}]
    2: reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible
       without loss of generality; "a basic story line"; "a
       canonical syllable pattern" [syn: {basic}, {canonic},
       {canonical}]
    3: serving as a base or starting point; "a basic course in
       Russian"; "basic training for raw recruits"; "a set of basic
       tools"; "an introductory art course" [syn: {basic},
       {introductory}]
    4: of or denoting or of the nature of or containing a base
    n 1: a popular programming language that is relatively easy to
         learn; an acronym for beginner's all-purpose symbolic
         instruction code; no longer in general use
    2: (usually plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is
       constant [syn: {basic}, {staple}]
    

Basic \Ba"sic\, a.
   1. (Chem.)
      (a) Relating to a base; performing the office of a base in
          a salt.
      (b) Having the base in excess, or the amount of the base
          atomically greater than that of the acid, or exceeding
          in proportion that of the related neutral salt.
      (c) Apparently alkaline, as certain normal salts which
          exhibit alkaline reactions with test paper.
          [1913 Webster]

   2. (Min.) Said of crystalline rocks which contain a
      relatively low percentage of silica, as basalt.
      [1913 Webster]

   {Basic salt} (Chem.), a salt formed from a base or hydroxide
      by the partial replacement of its hydrogen by a negative
      or acid element or radical.
      [1913 Webster]
    

BASIC \BASIC\ n.
   1. (Computers) [Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Iruction C.]
      an artificial computer language with a relatively
      simplified instruction set.

   Note: Writing a program in BASIC or other higher computer
         languages is simpler than writing in assembly language.
         See also {programming language}, {FORTRAN}.
         [PJC]
    

higher programming language \higher programming language\ n.
   (Computers)
   A computer programming language with an instruction set
   allowing one instruction to code for several assembly
   language instructions.

   Note: The aggregation of several assembly-language
         instructions into one instruction allows much greater
         efficiency in writing computer programs. Most programs
         are now written in some higher programming language,
         such as {BASIC}, {FORTRAN}, {COBOL}, {C}, {C++},
         {PROLOG}, or {JAVA}.
         [PJC]
    

BASIC
 /bay'.sic/, n.

   A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's
   experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many
   years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger
   W. Dijkstra observed in Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal
   Perspective that "It is practically impossible to teach good
   programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC:
   as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
   regeneration." This is another case (like {Pascal}) of the cascading
   {lossage} that happens when a language deliberately designed as an
   educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short
   BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing
   anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits
   that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This
   wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common
   on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined tens of
   thousands of potential wizards.

   [1995: Some languages called "BASIC" aren't quite this nasty any more,
   having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control structures
   and shed their line numbers. --ESR]

   BASIC stands for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code".
   Earlier versions of this entry claiming this was a later {backronym}
   were incorrect.
    

BASIC

   <language> Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
   A simple language originally designed for ease of programming
   by students and beginners.  Many dialects exist, and BASIC is
   popular on {microcomputers} with sound and graphics support.
   Most micro versions are {interactive} and {interpreted}.

   BASIC has become the leading cause of brain-damage in
   proto-hackers.  This is another case (like {Pascal}) of the
   cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately
   designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously.  A
   novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20
   lines) very easily; writing anything longer is painful and
   encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more
   powerful languages.  This wouldn't be so bad if historical
   accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros.  As
   it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year.

   Originally, all references to code, both {GOTO} and GOSUB
   (subroutine call) referred to the destination by its line
   number.  This allowed for very simple editing in the days
   before {text editors} were considered essential.  Just typing
   the line number deleted the line and to edit a line you just
   typed the new line with the same number.  Programs were
   typically numbered in steps of ten to allow for insertions.
   Later versions, such as {BASIC V}, allow {GOTO}-less
   {structured programming} with named {procedures} and
   {functions}, IF-THEN-ELSE-ENDIF constructs and {WHILE} loops
   etc.

   Early BASICs had no graphic operations except with graphic
   characters.  In the 1970s BASIC {interpreters} became standard
   features in {mainframes} and {minicomputers}.  Some versions
   included {matrix} operations as language {primitives}.

   A {public domain} {interpreter} for a mixture of {DEC}'s
   MU-Basic and Microsoft Basic is here
   (ftp://oak.oakland.edu/pub/Unix-c/languages/basic/basic.tar-z).
   A {yacc} {parser} and {interpreter} were in the
   comp.sources.unix archives volume 2.

   See also {ANSI Minimal BASIC}, {bournebasic}, {bwBASIC},
   {ubasic}, {Visual Basic}.

   [{Jargon File}]

   (1995-03-15)
    

BASIC
       Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
       
    

106 Moby Thesaurus words for "basic":
      ab ovo, aboriginal, acid, alkali, austere, bare, basal, basilar,
      bedrock, biochemical, bottom, capital, central, chaste, chemical,
      chemicobiological, chemicoengineering, chemicomineralogical,
      chemicophysical, chemurgic, chief, constituent, constitutive,
      copolymeric, copolymerous, crucial, dimeric, dimerous,
      electrochemical, element, elemental, elementary, embryonic,
      essential, focal, foundational, fundamental, generative, genetic,
      germinal, gut, heteromerous, homely, homespun, homogeneous,
      in embryo, in ovo, indispensable, indivisible, irreducible,
      isomerous, key, life-and-death, life-or-death, macrochemical, main,
      material, mere, metameric, monolithic, monomerous, nonacid,
      of a piece, of the essence, of vital importance, original,
      part and parcel, photochemical, physicochemical, phytochemical,
      plain, polymeric, pregnant, primal, primary, prime, primeval,
      primitive, primordial, principal, pristine, protogenic, pure,
      pure and simple, radical, radiochemical, root, rudiment,
      rudimentary, seminal, severe, simon-pure, simple, single, spare,
      stark, substantial, substantive, thermochemical, unadorned,
      uncluttered, underlying, undifferenced, undifferentiated, uniform,
      vital