BASIC at 40 looks better than I do at 37...

Well, not if you ask my wife, I guess. Forty years ago today BASIC was born at Dartmouth college. Could they have ever envisioned a language as powerful and respectable as VisualBasic.NET back then? I think it's fascinating how far the language has progressed.

BASIC was actually how I got into my career. OK, more specifically, it was QBASIC. I'd been working as a software trainer for a few years, delivering courses on things like WordStar, Ventura Publisher, and this little upstart OS called Windows 3.0. I'd also done a few courses around Paradox. Then, a client wanted some training in BASIC, specifically QBASIC/QuickBasic. I pretty much taught myself to program in it to write the courseware. Oh, sure, after that was over, I dabbled in FoxPro a bit. But once I got involved with Visual Basic 3.0, I was hooked, and the rest is history. However, given the fact that I'm not famous for anything yet, it's not the kind of history you'll see on the History channel...

Now, can somebody tell me how old C# really is?