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
    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]

	

	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

	

	BASIC
       Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

	

	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

    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)