THE VIDEO SHELF · history of BASIC
Birth of BASIC
A Dartmouth-produced documentary on how professors John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz, with a group of undergraduates, invented the BASIC language. It covers the creation of BASIC and the early time-sharing environment at Dartmouth.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN recommends it as the definitive documentary on BASIC's origins, and it resurfaces whenever BASIC or Kurtz comes up.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Dartmouth
- Topic
- history of BASIC
- Format
- documentary
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 3
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2021–2024
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
I interviewed Tom Kurtz in 2017. He was so generous, and as brilliant as you'd expect. He wrote me a memo on "Grammatical Simplifications in BASIC." He loved memos--was an academic mathematician at heart, even at 89! It was his idea to make computing accessible--he …
nettework on Hacker News · 2024-11
In Thomas E. Kurtz has diedI enjoy messing around in the Owlet browser-based BBC BASIC editor. 8-bit graphics still has a place in modern web design ;) [LINK] Related doc on youtube: "Birth of BASIC" [VIDEO]
ArtWomb on Hacker News · 2021-02
In BBC Micro at 40: How it inspired a generation of coders [video]There's a really good documentary on the creation of BASIC at Dartmouth (made by Dartmouth): [VIDEO] If you don't want to watch the documentary, we did a shorter podcast episode about it: [LINK]
WoodenChair on Hacker News · 2024-05
In BASIC turns 60
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.