BASIC

BASIC (an acronym for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a computer procedure-oriented programming language designed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz in the 1960s to be easily learned by anyone. Over the years, various companies made their own proprietary versions and included them in their computers (and Texas Instruments made their own version, TI-BASIC, which is included in some of their calculators). Microsoft’s Visual Basic is the programming language of choice for in-house programming at small businesses. But in mathematics and physics, BASIC is little used outside of the classroom.

The following BASIC program takes two integers as inputs and outputs their greatest common divisor using Euclid’s algorithm:

100 REM Program Greatest Common Divisor Using Euclidean algorithm110 INPUT "Please enter a positive integer A"; A115 INPUT "Please enter a positive integer B"; B120 WHILE B > 0121 TEMPA = B122 A = B123 B = TEMPA MOD B124 WEND130 PRINT "The GCD is "; A140 END