BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)[1] is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use. The original version was designed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz and released at Dartmouth College in 1964. They wanted to enable students in fields other than science and mathematics to use computers. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, which was something only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn.
The emergence of early microcomputers in the mid-1970s led to the development of a number of BASIC dialects, including Microsoft BASIC in 1975. Due to the tiny main memory available on these machines, often 4 kB, a variety of Tiny BASIC dialects was also created. BASIC was available for almost any system of the era, and naturally became the de facto programming language for the home computer systems that emerged in the late 1970s. These machines almost always had a BASIC interpreter installed by default, often in the machine's firmware or sometimes on a ROM cartridge.