Result from Foreign Dictionaries (7 entries found)

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]: Basic \Ba"sic\, a. 1. (Chem.) (a) Relating to a base; performing the office of a base in a salt. (b) Having the base in excess, or the amount of the base atomically greater than that of the acid, or exceeding in proportion that of the related neutral salt. (c) Apparently alkaline, as certain normal salts which exhibit alkaline reactions with test paper. [1913 Webster] 2. (Min.) Said of crystalline rocks which contain a relatively low percentage of silica, as basalt. [1913 Webster] {Basic salt} (Chem.), a salt formed from a base or hydroxide by the partial replacement of its hydrogen by a negative or acid element or radical. [1913 Webster] From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]: BASIC \BASIC\ n. 1. (Computers) [Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Iruction C.] an artificial computer language with a relatively simplified instruction set. Note: Writing a program in BASIC or other higher computer languages is simpler than writing in assembly language. See also {programming language}, {FORTRAN}. [PJC] From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]: higher programming language \higher programming language\ n. (Computers) A computer programming language with an instruction set allowing one instruction to code for several assembly language instructions. Note: The aggregation of several assembly-language instructions into one instruction allows much greater efficiency in writing computer programs. Most programs are now written in some higher programming language, such as {BASIC}, {FORTRAN}, {COBOL}, {C}, {C++}, {PROLOG}, or {JAVA}. [PJC] From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]: basic adj 1: pertaining to or constituting a base or basis; "a basic fact"; "the basic ingredients"; "basic changes in public opinion occur because of changes in priorities" [ant: {incident}, {incidental}] 2: reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality; "a basic story line"; "a canonical syllable pattern" [syn: {basic}, {canonic}, {canonical}] 3: serving as a base or starting point; "a basic course in Russian"; "basic training for raw recruits"; "a set of basic tools"; "an introductory art course" [syn: {basic}, {introductory}] 4: of or denoting or of the nature of or containing a base n 1: a popular programming language that is relatively easy to learn; an acronym for beginner's all-purpose symbolic instruction code; no longer in general use 2: (usually plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is constant [syn: {basic}, {staple}] From The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003) [jargon]: BASIC /bay'?sic/, n. A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective that ?It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.? This is another case (like {Pascal}) of the cascading {lossage} that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential wizards. [1995: Some languages called ?BASIC? aren't quite this nasty any more, having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control structures and shed their line numbers. ?ESR] BASIC stands for ?Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code?. Earlier versions of this entry claiming this was a later {backronym} were incorrect. From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2013) [vera]: BASIC Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code From German-English FreeDict Dictionary ver. 0.3.3 [fd-deu-eng]: BASIC /beːaːɛsiːtseː/ Basic