BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) 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.
BASIC fell from use in the early 1990s, as newer machines with far greater capabilities came to market and other programming languages (such as Pascal and C) became tenable. Then, in 1991, Microsoft released Visual Basic, combining a greatly updated version of BASIC with a visual forms builder. This reignited use of the language and "VB" remains a major programming language in the form of VB.NET.