50 years ago today, the BASIC computer language was born as two math professors from Dartmouth College used it to help run the school's computer system for the first time.

Because BASIC is the first language that many computer scientists learn, it has been, for generations, a mother tongue of technologists.

This is why I’ve long argued that BASIC is the most consequential language in the history of computing. It’s a language for noobs, sure, but back then most everyone was a noob.

Long before the days of laptops and smartphones, Thomas E. Kurtz worked to give more students access to computers. That work helped propel generations into a new world. Kurtz has died at 96.

The history of basic computer programming languages dates back far. Learn more about the BASIC & C coding languages that got everything started.

Though coder Jeff Atwood thinks coding isn't for non-computer geeks, we can think of a lot of reasons normals should learn computer language.

Codeverse, launched in Chicago in 2017, teaches children as young at 6 the basics of computer coding through a language its co-founders created called KidScript.

One candidate language would be Python, it’s freely available and one of the easier programming languages to learn – compared, say, to C/C++.

Because BASIC is the first language that many computer scientists learn, it has been, for generations, a mother tongue of technologists.

Thomas E. Kurtz, co-pioneer of the BASIC programming language, dies at 96. In the 1960s, he and John Kemeny developed BASIC and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, transforming computer access and ...