Mazes

''This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod''

''This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod''

Whether or not the 10 PRINT pattern displayed on the screen is solvable at every instant, it was consistently identified as a maze in the early 1980s. In discussing the version of 10 PRINT found in the 1982 ''Commodore 64 User’s Guide,'' the manual points to the two graphical characters "that the program is using for the maze" (53). The programmer who submitted the one-line version found in ''Run'' also described it as "drawing a continuous maze" (13). If everyone were to see the output simply as a pattern of alternating diagonal lines it surely would not be as interesting to execute, to understand, and to discuss this program. The maze is the central visual trope used to read 10 PRINT's output, and it is a trope that has been heavily coded over the centuries.

Whether or not the 10 PRINT pattern displayed on the screen is solvable at every instant, it was consistently identified as a maze in the early 1980s. In discussing the version of 10 PRINT found in the 1982 ''Commodore 64 User’s Guide,'' the manual points to the two graphical characters "that the program is using for the maze" (53). The programmer who submitted the one-line version found in ''Run'' also described it as "drawing a continuous maze" (13). If everyone were to see the output simply as a pattern of alternating diagonal lines it surely would not be as interesting to execute, to understand, and to discuss this program. The maze is the central visual trope used to read 10 PRINT's output, and it is a trope that has been heavily coded over the centuries.