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BASIC (Beginners' All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a group of high-level, general-purpose programming languages that are designed to be easy to use. BASIC was initially designed to support simple mathematical operations. Matrix arithmetic was supported from its first implementation as a batch-language, and character strings were added in 1965. BASIC was born out of a larger movement towards time-sharing. Some dialects of BASIC support matrices and matrix-based operations that can be used to solve a set of simultaneous linear algebraic problems. These dialects directly supported matrix operations like assignment, addition, multiplicand (of compatible matrix types) and evaluation of a determinate. In the 1990s, BASIC's popularity declined as more powerful computers were introduced and advanced programming languages (such as Pascal or C) were made available.

Racket is an all-purpose multi-paradigm language. It is a descendant and modern dialect of Lisp. It is a platform that allows developers to create domain-specific languages and general-purpose programming languages. Racket's language core includes features like macros, modules and lexical closures. It also has delimited continuations (fluid variables), green threads and OS threads. The language comes with primitives such as event space and custodians that control resource management. This allows the language to act as an operating system by loading and managing other applications. The powerful macro system can be used to create further extensions to the language. This system, along with the module system and customized parsers, controls all aspects of the language. Racket implements most language constructs as macros.