Definition: basic

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Source: WordNet (r) 1.7 

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: (chemistry) of or denoting or of the nature of or containing
        a base
     n 1: a popular programming language that is relatively easy to
          learn (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction
          Code); no longer in general use [syn: BASIC]
     2: (usually plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is
        constant [syn: staple]

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) 

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.

Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (2003-OCT-10) 

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.
   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)

Source: V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms December 2001 

BASIC
        Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

Source: Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) 

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.