IN DECEMBER 1989 Guido van Rossum, a Dutch computer scientist, set himself a Christmas project. Irked by shortcomings in other programming languages, he wanted to build his own. His principles were ...

Weeks after signaling its intent to begin funding original programming, YouTube has begun assembling a team to oversee production. A spokeswoman for the company has confirmed reports that a trio of ...

Invented by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, BASIC was first successfully used to run programs on the school’s General Electric computer system 50 ...