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 ====== BASIC Programming Language ======
+Beginners' All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code was developed at Dartmouth College in 1964.  It is a high level programming language that was designed for ease of use and became a first programming language for many students.  Microsoft's very first product in 1975 was a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800.  In the microcomputer revolution that followed Microsoft BASIC became the built in language for many machines and saw wide use through the late 1980s.
+====== Getting BASIC started ======
+For most systems, typing **BASIC** once you are logged in will start a BASIC interpreter. From there you can issue BASIC commands or type in STATEMENTS that can be immediately evaluated.  For typing in programs, the user usually types in line numbers with the common practice being that you start at 10 and number by 10s.  This gives you enough space if you need to add additional lines between statements and is particularly critical on some BASIC interpreters that don't have a RENUM fuction.  BASICs on the various systems do have their own dialects and this page will attempt to point those out.  On the [[vm_cms_survival_guide|IBM 4361 running VM/SP5]] there is no interactive BASIC interpreter, but you can EDIT files and provide them as input to BASIC.
+^**Command**^**Description**^
+|OLD, LOAD|Loads an existing file into the memory buffer|
+|SAVE, REPLACE|Saves or replaces a file with the contents of the memory buffer|
+|NEW, SCRATCH|Clears the memory buffer|
+|RUN|Runs the program currently in the memory buffer|
+|RENUM|Not always available, but will renumber your program|
+|SYSTEM, MONITOR|Returns to the Operating System|
+|BYE, LOGOUT, OFF|Quits BASIC and logs the user out of the system|
+====== BASIC Programming Examples ======
+There are many statements available to you in BASIC, but here are a few that can get you started and will work across many BASIC interpreters.  Check out the BASIC Reference Manuals section below for all the statements available for a particular system.  Statement names and syntax can vary a bit. These examples are run on the [[TOPS-20]] system on the [[XKL Toad]] using the Stanford LOTS BASIC interpreter.

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