BASIC, not BATAP

This blog is about BASIC, which means Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. If it were about Being All Things to All People, the language would be call BATAP. ;-)

I'm inspired to write this because of the plight of General Motors. The world's largest auto manufacturer is losing money in droves. The reason is in their name, the first word of which is General. The problem is that there is so much competition in this world today, that being general is not a strength. If you want to get people's attention, you need to specialize.

BASIC also needs to specialize. The key ideas it needs to specialize in? Easy, simple, approachable, and fun. Does it have power? Yes. It has the kind of power that gives the average person the ability to program computers because of the four qualities I just listed. When Microsoft created Visual Basic (now officially unsupported by the way) they took BASIC out of the domain of the everyday person and tried to make a professional tool out of it. They should have called it Visual BATAP.

BATAP can never be BASIC.