Characteristics of BASIC - SS1 ICT Lesson Note

Over the years, many variations and dialects of BASIC have been developed, each with its own features and extensions. Despite its simplicity, BASIC played a crucial role in making programming accessible to a wider audience and laid the foundation for the programming languages that followed. BASIC has several characteristics that make it suitable for beginners and simple applications:

 

Ease of Use: BASIC's simple syntax and English-like keywords make it easy for beginners to understand and write code.

 

Interpreted Language: BASIC programs are interpreted, which means that they are executed line by line by an interpreter rather than being compiled into machine code.

 

Dynamic Typing: Variables in BASIC are not explicitly declared with data types. The interpreter determines the data type based on the value assigned to the variable.

 

Limited Data Structures: While modern programming languages offer a wide range of data structures, BASIC typically offers simple data structures like arrays and lists.

 

Limited number of functions: BASIC may lack some advanced features and data manipulation capabilities found in more modern programming languages.

 

Educational Value: BASIC was widely used for educational purposes, introducing many people to programming concepts and sparking their interest in computer science.