TLDR: BASIC is a family of programming languages that were designed to be easy to use. It was created in the 1960s by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College. BASIC was originally developed to allow students in non-scientific fields to use computers, as most computers at the time required custom software that only scientists and mathematicians knew how to write. BASIC became popular on minicomputer systems and later on microcomputers, such as home computers. It declined in popularity in the 1990s but was revived with the introduction of Visual Basic, which is still used today.

BASIC, which stands for Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, is a family of programming languages that were designed to be easy to use. The original version of BASIC was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers, as most computers at the time required writing custom software that only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn.

Kemeny and Kurtz also developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS), which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs simultaneously on remote terminals. This model became popular on minicomputer systems in the late 1960s and early 1970s. BASIC was available for almost any system of the era and became the de facto programming language for home computer systems that emerged in the late 1970s.

The emergence of microcomputers in the mid-1970s led to the development of multiple dialects of BASIC, including Microsoft BASIC. BASIC was available on almost every home computer of the era and was often included in the machine's firmware or on a ROM cartridge.

However, BASIC declined in popularity in the 1990s as more powerful microcomputers came to market and programming languages with advanced features became more tenable on such computers. In 1991, Microsoft released Visual Basic, which combined an updated version of BASIC with a visual forms builder. This reignited the use of the language, and Visual Basic remains a major programming language today.

In summary, BASIC is a family of programming languages that were designed to be easy to use. It was originally created to allow students in non-scientific fields to use computers and became popular on minicomputer and microcomputer systems. While its popularity declined in the 1990s, it was revived with the introduction of Visual Basic, which is still used today.