Editing BBC BASIC (section)

===Precursor languages===
At [[Dartmouth College]], two mathematics professors<ref>{{cite web |title=Event History |url=https://www.dartmouth.edu/basicfifty/events.html |publisher=Dartmouth College |access-date=7 January 2024}}</ref> wanted all students to be able to program on their new college computer. The existing high-level languages, like [[FORTRAN]] and [[COBOL]], were used by professionals and not really suitable for introductory programming by non-technical users. In 1964, they created [[Dartmouth BASIC]]<ref>{{cite web |title=Dartmouth College BASIC Instruction Manual |url=https://www.dartmouth.edu/basicfifty/basicmanual_1964.pdf |publisher=Dartmouth College |access-date=7 January 2024}}</ref> (short for '''B'''eginner’s '''A'''ll-Purpose '''S'''ymbolic '''I'''nstruction '''C'''ode) to be a computer language anyone could use. Having a formula-based [[syntactic]] structure, it is a simplified FORTRAN.<ref name=personal/>

A combination of factors led to BASIC becoming a major language in the late 1960s, and in the 1970s when the first [[microcomputer]]s were being built, it was already the ''de facto'' standard for small systems. The introduction of the [[Altair 8800]] cemented the position of BASIC as the first programming language introduced for the platform was [[Paul Allen]] and [[Bill Gates]]' [[Altair BASIC]]. As new micros were introduced, almost all of them ran some variation of BASIC as its primary interface.<ref name=personal>{{cite web |last1=McCracken |first1=Harry |title=Fifty years of BASIC, the programming language that made computers personal |url=https://time.com/69316/basic/ |access-date=7 January 2024 |date=29 April 2014}}</ref>