Microsoft’s 6502 BASIC ran on the same CPU that powered the Apple II, Commodore 8-bit series, NES, and Atari 2600.

There were other versions, of course, especially for very small computers, but the gold standard for home computer Basic was Microsoft’s version, known then as GW-Basic.

GW-BASIC can trace its roots back to Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's implementation of Microsoft's first product, the BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 computer.

Microsoft has open sourced GW-BASIC, a programming language developed some 38 years ago. GW-BASIC and variants such as QBasic, QuickBasic and others provided the onramp to computer programming for ...

There were other versions, of course, especially for very small computers, but the gold standard for home computer Basic was Microsoft’s version, known then as GW-Basic.

The new product extended GW-BASIC with more graphics support, better structuring, and - at last - a compiler. Developers could now produce EXE files, greatly improving performance.