Dennis Allison’s 1975 article in Dr. Dobb’s Journal was a key moment in the history of Computer Science. It contained a formal specification of Tiny BASIC, a BASIC that could be implemented in less than 4 KB.

Stellar BASIC is very much in the same vein as Tiny BASIC, and is intended to evolve over time.

• Line-numbered programs
• LET (often optional)
• PRINT
• INPUT
• IF-THEN
• GOTO
• GOSUB and RETURN
• FOR-NEXT
• Usually only access to integer variables and integer based math
• Single-letter variables (ex. A, B, 'Z)

  * No floating-point math * Very limited strings * No arrays * No file I/O * Minimal error messages * Very limited editing commands

  Some versions didn’t even store source code text—only tokenized forms.

  == Example BASIC program

  <Code:BASIC> 10 LET A = 1 20 PRINT A 30 A = A + 1 40 IF A ⇐ 10 THEN GOTO 20 50 END </Code>

  Stellar BASIC will allow this even shorter form:

  <Code:BASIC> 10 A=1 20 ?A 30 A=A+1 40 IF A⇐10 GOTO 20 </Code>

  (?'' is shorthand for `PRINT`.)

Notable Tiny BASIC implementations

• Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (Dennis Allison)
• Li-Chen Wang’s Tiny BASIC
• 6800 Tiny BASIC
• NASCOM Tiny BASIC
• Apple I BASIC (inspired by Tiny BASIC ideas)
• Micro-Soft 8080 BASIC (larger, but influenced by Tiny BASIC work)