Nowadays, "basic" has a very different and derogatory Urban Dictionary-style meaning. Fifty years ago on this very day, however, it was the name given to a new computer-programming language born in a ...

1. Disable all windows except for 'Program'. 2. Keep selecting 'New Line' until over nine empty lines have been entered. The number displayed for lines over 10 will be scrambled.

I was entering the miseries of seventh grade in the fall of 1980 when a friend dragged me into a dimly lit second-floor room. The school had recently installed a newfangled Commodore PET computer, a ...