Legacy

The golden age of BASIC would eventually come to an end. Although it didn't happen overnight, by the mid-90s, languages such as C, Java, and web-based languages like PHP and JavaScript were replacing BASIC. At that point, the language had become outdated and resistant to the current standards of programming. Technological advancements had freed many constraints that once popularized BASIC.

However, impact of the language remains. If you ask a programmer what their first language was—what got them interested at the start, there’s a good chance the answer is BASIC. Before BASIC, programming was a difficult and complicated task, requiring resources most people could not afford. At the moment of its creation at Dartmouth, a new view of programming opened up. For the first time, anybody could use a computer.

BASIC was the force that democratized programming and computing, and without its influence, our computer-based world would be very different.