GitHub - microsoft/GW-BASIC: The original source code of Microsoft GW-BASIC from 1983

We are excited to announce the open-sourcing of Microsoft's GW-BASIC on GitHub!

I’ve been programming for over two decades, and I can’t make a full-stack enterprise web application. The first lines of code I wrote were in GW-BASIC. When I was in eighth grade, I enrolled in a typing class. Students who finished their typing practice before class ended were given an extra credit opportunity: copying program source code. It was a fantastic test of applied accuracy, and I gladly participated. Eventually I started to pick up on some of the patterns I saw in those BASIC programs. I came up with my own programs—mad libs and simple calculators—and fell in love.

Explore the original 6502 BASIC—now open source! Dive into retro code, history, and emulators. Fork it, run it, and relive computing's roots.

While working on a toy BASIC implementation, I ran into an unexpected challenge implementing the WHILE instruction. The implementation ...