Atari BASIC is an interpreter for the BASIC programming language that shipped with Atari 8-bit computers. Unlike most American BASICs of the home computer era, Atari BASIC is not a derivative of Microsoft BASIC and differs in significant ways. It includes keywords for Atari-specific features and lacks support for string arrays.
8K Atari BASIC cartridge
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version 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. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn.
The HP 2000 system was designed to run time-shared BASIC as its primary task.
"Train Basic every day!"—reads a poster (bottom center) in a Russian school (c. 1985–1986)
BASIC came to some video game systems, such as the Nintendo Famicom.