Date   : Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:23:19 -0000
From   : "David Harper" <dl.harper@...>
Subject: Re: Basic & BBC Basic

Just to throw another coin into this pot re. the name "Basic".

It was said to stand for "Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" 
when I first came across it, which would have been in 1972 (or possibly 
'71). It must at that point have been fairly newly emerged from Dartmouth 
College where it originated.

At that stage of history all computer language names had to be pronounceable 
and had to mean something as acronyms or quasi-acronyms. BASIC was up 
against Fortran (for "Formula Translator") and Algol (for "Algorithmic 
Language"). There was also DEC's FOCAL, and I cannot remember what that 
stands for (despite having used it rather a lot on the PDP-8 (remember that 
anyone?)), though again it certainly was an acronym. Things like "Pascal" 
(named after a person), "C" (terse in the extreme) or even its predecessor 
"BCPL" (not easy to pronounce) had not been thought of.

It might well be that the acronym was thought up to give the name a meaning 
(other than its obvious one, which could be felt to be disparaging). I am 
just pointing out that the acronym goes back pretty well as far as the name 
itself.

David Harper