There was a time when anyone could try programming, thanks to the ubiquity of Basic. But Basic's a nonstarter these days, so what will entice a new generation?

Nowadays, "basic" has a very different and derogatory Urban Dictionary-style meaning. Fifty years ago on this very day, however, it was the name given to a new computer-programming language born ...

60 years ago, the inventors of the BASIC programming language actually achieved what they had hoped for: simple programming that is accessible to everyone.

A recent post by [lackofimagination] proposes that we should teach programming using BASIC. And not a modern whizz-pow BASIC, but old-fashioned regular BASIC as we might have used it in the 1980s.

With strong programming competition from streaming video providers and continued cord cutting, most basic cable networks have been losing viewers.