That is, there was no way until an official standardization activity commenced. But, the work done at such isolated locations did not find its way into general practice, and there was no way to curb the individuality that dictated that different manufacturers have different versions of BASIC or that the same manufacturer might have as many as 5 or 10 different versions of BASIC on its different lines of computers. It allowed external subroutines, for example, to be precompiled (preprocessed to save time) and placed in libraries for general use. For example, BASIC at Dartmouth College continued to grow until, by the end of the 1970s, it contained many features found only in more sophisticated languages. These were used in secondary schools and colleges, but the total number of students who could be trained using these “better” versions of BASIC was smaller than the number who learned BASIC on a microcomputer. True, some “better” versions of BASIC were available, but only on certain larger machines such as larger computer-based, time-sharing systems. Educators began to wonder how they could teach good program construction and modularization using a language that essentially does not allow either. Still another was the primitive GOSUB-RETURN subroutine mechanisms still used by most BASICS. Another reason was the lack of structured programming constructs. Many of the shortcut features described above, which arose because of the limited power and limited memory of the early microcomputers, were continued in later versions of the language, even when more powerful computers and more spacious memories were available. Despite all this, BASIC began to lose favor with computer scientists and educators. Moreover, BASIC was about the only language available if one wanted to use the graphic capabilities of these machines. BASIC was the predominant language found on these machines. Microcomputers quickly became the dominant force in computing in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Kurtz, in Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology (Third Edition), 2003 III.E BASIC Loses Favor
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