BBC BASIC

BBC BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Acorn Computers for the BBC Microcomputer, produced after the British Broadcasting Corporation selected Acorn to supply computers for its Computer Literacy Project in 1981. Sophie Wilson led the implementation of the language at Acorn, building an interpreter that shipped in read only memory built into the BBC Micro itself rather than being loaded from disk or tape. BBC BASIC combined broad compatibility with the Microsoft BASIC conventions familiar from other home computers of the era with structured programming features borrowed from the ALGOL 60 family of languages, including named procedures and functions, indentation friendly control structures, and support for inline assembly language, which together let programmers write larger, better organized programs than many contemporary BASIC dialects allowed. First appearing in 1981 on the 6502 based BBC Microcomputer running Acorn's MOS operating system, the language was later carried forward onto Acorn's ARM based Archimedes and RISC PC computers under RISC OS, where a compiled, ARM native version offered substantially improved performance. BBC BASIC was used extensively both in British schools during the Computer Literacy Project era and in more demanding hobbyist and small business programming, and modern reimplementations continue to keep the dialect usable on current hardware and operating systems.