A Tribute to Professor Thomas Kurtz (1928–2024)

The tech world lost a pioneering figure with the passing of Professor Thomas Kurtz, the co-creator of BASIC programming language, who died on November 12, 2024, at the age of 96.

When BASIC was released in 1964, only four high-level programming languages existed: FORTRAN, ALGOL, LISP, and COBOL. This puts into perspective how early and influential BASIC was in the evolution of programming languages, predating Pascal, Smalltalk, and C by many years.

As someone whose tech journey began with BASIC, I feel compelled to share how this remarkable innovation shaped my career. In the summer of 1989, as a middle school student, I wrote my first program in BASIC. That simple start led me to years of professional development with Visual Basic, creating enterprise solutions that served businesses worldwide.

Thank you, Professor Kurtz, for creating a language that opened the doors of programming to millions. Your legacy lives on in every line of code written by those who started their journey with BASIC. ️

Originally published at https://venkatarangan.com on November 18, 2024.