BASIC Implementations

A subset of FORTRAN originally developed by John G. Kemény and Thomas E. Kurtz in 1964 to offer an easier programming language for beginners for the Dartmouth University time-sharing system. Basic was easy to implement and could reside in a fairly small amount of memory which made it popular with the first generation of microcomputers in the 1970s and it remained the most popular programming language on personal computers until the 1990s.

Like the FORTRAN language it is based on Basic is unstructured and therefore there is a tendency for programmers to write spaghetti code when developing in Basic, and with the variants used in microcomputers, known collectively as "Street Basic", the tendency was even greater. Awareness of this shortcoming increased in the early 80s as Basic started to come under threat in educational institutions on one hand from languages designed from ground up to teach structured programming like COMAL and on the other hand from inexpensive implementations of Pascal. Many Basic developers responded by making their variations of the language increasingly structured to a point where some of them resemble Pascal in all aspects except syntax. That was helped in no small part by the introduction of the EMCA-116 standard in the mid 80s, but as many governments require that all products bought with public money follow official standards it forced most vendors to comply, even Microsoft rushed out QBasic in response to it.

In 1990 more people knew how to program in Basic than in all other programming languages combined, however the language started to lose its popularity when GUIs became more popular but most Basic implementation had limited support for the programming models needed.

OS/2 Implementations

• Bywater Basic - Open source - Current - Command line only.
• CA Realizer - Versions 1 & 2 offered OS/2 support
• GFA Basic
• VisualAge for Basic
• Liberty BASIC
• LotusScript - Somewhat Visual Basic like - Included with Lotus Notes and SmartSuite
• Microshare Basic - Business Basic - Commercial
• Microsoft Basic Professional - Commercial
• Microsoft Visual Basic
• Omni Basic
• True Basic - No longer developed but available for sale at a discounted price. Versions up to 5.5 supported OS/2
• WDBasic - Street basic - Freeware

Other Basic like languages

• COMAL - A blend of Pascal and Basic, reminiscent in some ways of later structured Basics like BBC Basic and QBasic.

Foreign libraries with bindings for Basic

• LibcURL - Internet URL (WWW, FTP, etc) access - Open Source

OS/2 text & programmers editors with Basic language support

• Boxer - "Street Basic", Qbasic and Visual Basic" support included by default
• BRIEF - "Street Basic", Qbasic, CBASIC, Turbo Basic and Visual Basic" support included by default, although it depends on version
• Future Wave Editor - syntax support included by default - Shareware

DOS Implementations

Interpreter

• BBC Basic - Discontinued but supplied for free with the Windows version of the product.
• Bywater Basic - Open source
• Canon Basic - Discontinued - A scripting variant of this language is still used for embedded programming by Canon.
• GW-BASIC - developed by Microsoft for DOS OEM
• IBM PC BASIC - developed by Microsoft for IBM PC
• Mallard BASIC PC - developed by Locomotive Software Ltd. - commercial
• MICRO-BASIC - developed by Dave Dunfield
• Napoleon Brandy Basic - Open Source
• PBASIC - Discontinued - Aka Digital Research Personal Basic or Metacomco Basic - compatible with CP/M MBASIC
• QBasic - introduced with MS-DOS 5, also included in OS/2 2.0 and later versions.

Compiler

• ApBasic - Shareware
• ASIC - Shareware
• Better Basic - Commercial
• CBasic - Discontinued - First Symantec product - Distributed by DRI
• FranzBasic
• FreeBasic - Open Source GPL
• GFA Basic - Free Download
• Microsoft Basic Professional - Commercial
• Microsoft QuickBasic - Commercial
• Microsoft Visual Basic - Version 1 offered DOS support.
• MTBASIC (Softaid) - Commercial
• MWBasic - Aka MB86
• Omni Basic - Commercial
• PowerBasic - Commercial
• Sparry Basic - Commercial
• SuperSoft BASIC Compiler - Commercial
• Borland Turbo Basic - Commercial
• True Basic - Commercial - Versions up to 4.01 supported DOS.

DOS text & programmers editors with Basic language support

• Boxer - "Street Basic", QBasic and Visual Basic support included by default.
• BRIEF - "Street Basic", QBasic, CBASIC, Turbo Basic and Visual Basic support included by default, although it depends on version.

Win-OS/2 Implementations

• CA Realizer - Versions 1 to 3 offer Win-OS/2 support.
• GFA Basic - Discontinued - Free Download - Limited support available from a third party.
• Liberty BASIC - Discontinued - Last version that works under Win-OS/2 is 2.02
• Microsoft Basic Professional - Commercial - Cross development from DOS or OS/2 only.
• Microsoft Visual Basic - Versions 1 to 4 offer Win-OS/2 support.
• True Basic - Versions up to 5.3 supported Win-OS/2

Java implementations

• Cocoa
• HotTEA
• Instant Basic for Java
• Jasic

JavaScript implementations

• qb.js - Partially QBasic compatible, can be run inside a web browser or by using the JavaScript Desktop Enabler.