BASIC

BASIC programs were, from the first years of the language, circulated using ink on paper. In 1964 and the years following, there was no Web or even Internet to allow for the digital exchange of programs, and it was often impractical to distribute programs on computer-readable media such as paper tape. From the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, BASIC was known in print not only through manuals and textbooks that explicitly taught programming in the language, but also through collections of programs and program that appeared in magazines. The printed materials that remain today give insight into the practices BASIC users adopted and the culture that developed among them.

Many computer magazines featured BASIC programs in addition to the one discussed earlier in this chapter, ''Dr. Dobb's.'' For instance, ''Creative Computing'' was a significant early magazine for microcomputer users interested in exploring computing. Founded by David H. Ahl, who also wrote some ground-breaking books, this magazine for the home computer hobbyist was launched in 1974 (before the Altair 8800) and published until 1985.

As ''Creative Computing'' was nearing the end of its run, other magazines, many of them platform-specific, were just getting started. One was ''RUN'' (1984-1992), a monthly magazine that was published by IDG Communications, focused on the Commodore 64 and VIC-20, and included a version of 10 PRINT in its pages. A German edition of ''RUN'' was published as well, and ''ReRUN'' disks made programs in the magazine available for purchase in machine-readable format. Another home computer magazine of this era was ''Compute!'' (1979-1994), which began as ''Pet Gazette,'' a 1978 magazine put together by Len Lindsay that was specific to the Commodore PET computer. In July 1983, ''Compute!'' launched a spin-off publication, ''Compute!'s Gazette,'' for Commodore 64 and VIC-20 owners specifically. In the UK there were several other magazines for Commodore users, including ''Zzap! 64'', ''Commodore User'', and ''Commodore Format''. The last of these did not start publishing until October 1990. This magazine was not about BASIC or learning to program, however. It focused on gaming and offered game news, reviews, and cheats, with its "Powerpack" tape offering full games and demos for subscribers to load and run.

While magazines were ready and regular sources of new programs, many also found enjoyable code in books. David H. Ahl's influential and early compilation, ''101 Basic Computer Games'', was first published in 1973 by the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). This was the first book to collect only games in BASIC. It includes a sample run of each game and acknowledges the programmers who contributed each game. Each program's "computer limitations" are described so that users understand the specific BASIC dialects and hardware that are supported. Illustrations, courtesy of ''Mad Magazine'' among others, punctuate the presentation -- a rather playful presentation for a corporate publication from a 1970s computer company. The game's titles are abbreviated at at most six letters, so they can be used as filenames, since they did not exceed six letters. The abbreviations were rather cryptic, with ACEYDU standing for "Acey Ddeucy CArd Game"; AMAZIN for "Draw a Maze"; or POET for "Random Poetry (Haiku)." In the preface, the educational value of playing and creating games and the need for "unguided learning" is emphasized.

A new edition of this book, ''Basic Computer Games, Microcomputer Edition,'' appeared in January 1978 -- reflecting BASIC's move from timesharing minicomputers to microcomputers. This edition's preface begins with a dictionary definition (from an unnamed dictionary) of the word "game." It then provides a cursory history of sports and games moving from the ancient Chinese and Egyptians to the 1970s in little more than a paragraph and a half, emphasizing that games offer recreational breaks from the "realities of life" and also have other "important redeeming virtues." The programs in this book are all said to run on the gold standard of microcomputer BASICs: MITS Altair 8K BASIC, Rev. 4.0 (ix). The games, no longer referred to by cryptic six-character tags, are organized by category -- e.g., "Introductory Fun;" "Educational;" "Plotting and Pictures;" "Number and Letter Guessing;" "Remove an Object;" "Matrix Manipulation;" "Logic;" "Space;" "Sports Simulation;" "Gambling Casino;" "Card and Board;" "Combat;" etc. Perhaps these categorizations relate to later, well-recognized computer game genres. But it would be hard to fit 10 PRINT into any category except "Introductory Fun" or (to use the category found in ''RUN'') "One-Liner."