In computer programming, BASIC (an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Coe) is a family of high-level programming languages. The original BASIC was designed in 1964, by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S., to provide access for non-science students to computers. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, which was something only scientists and mathematicians tended to do. The language (in one variant or another) became widespread on microcomputers in the late 1970s and home computers in the 1980s. BASIC remains popular to this day in a handful of highly modified dialects and new languages based on BASIC such as Microsoft Visual Basic.