intertwingly

It’s just data

Basic


Shelley Powers: I started with BASIC. Contrary to popular myth, that’s B-A-S-I-C, which stands for: Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. However, the language is now usually given as just ‘Basic’

My first language was BASIC too.  Ah, it is fun to reminisce.

Shelley must have used a later version than I did.  In earlier versions, assignment statements required the word “LET”, DIM was exclusively for arrays, IF statements were followed by either one to three line numbers, no “THEN GOTO”, it was either “THEN” or “GOTO”, but it meant the same.  Oh, and expressions in PRINT statements were separated by semicolons.

Most of these restrictions were lifted in languages like Visual Basic (note: Basic, not BASIC) that, among other things, allowed identifiers that consisted of more than a single letter optionally followed by a single digit optionally followed by a dollar sign.

Oh, and everything was always in ALL CAPS.  It was like all programs were YELLING AT YOU.

The best example I remember of spaghetti code is, quite aptly, a program that created mazes.