6 definitions found
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
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.
2. (Min.) Said of crystalline rocks which contain a
relatively low percentage of silica, as basalt.
{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.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
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: {incidental}]
2: reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible
without loss of generality; "a basic story line"; "a
canonical syllable pattern" [syn: {canonic}, {canonical}]
3: of primary importance; "basic truths" [syn: {basal}, {primary}]
4: 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: {introductory}]
5: 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: {staple}]
From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:
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.
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:
BASIC
<language> Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
A simple language oroginally designed for ease of programming
by students and beginners.
BASIC exists in many dialects, and 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 (a) 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. 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)
From Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [vera]:
BASIC
Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
From eng-fra [engfra]:
basic
[beisik]
basique