Basic

About 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, a book from the MIT Press » 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 | 10print.org

I remember my first program, by which I mean one that I cobbled together myself, not simply typing in a complete listing from the manual. I was twelve, the year was 1985, and the computer a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (a machine which was actually the first 16-bit home computer). My program was a very simple text adventure game, created by chaining together as many IF¦ THEN GOTO statements as I had patience for. ...

This book takes a single line of code”the extremely concise BASIC program for the Commodore 64 inscribed in the title”and uses it as a lens through which to consider the phenomenon of creative computing and the way computer programs exist in culture. The authors of this collaboratively written book treat code not as merely functional but as a text”in the case of 10 PRINT, a text that appeared in many different printed sources”that yields a story about its making, its purpose, its assumptions, and more. They consider randomness and regularity in computing and art, the maze in culture, the popular BASIC programming language, and the highly influential Commodore 64 computer. ...