When asked about the legacy of BASIC, Brooks says, “In the early ’60s, computers were still the big machines stuck back in the dinosaur rooms with the air conditioning and the raised floors and all of the cables where people wouldn’t go. And it wasn’t thought that ordinary human beings really had much connection with them. And then you hand out a program like BASIC and a time-sharing system … and it was astonishing what happened fairly quickly, what people were able to do.”
Dartmouth is celebrating 50 years of BASIC with a day of events on Wednesday, April 30.
Listen to the full story, broadcast 4/22/14 by NHPR.
