Kindred Code

From Maze

   * Algorithms and Action (Mark S.)
   * Screensavers and Computer Dreams (Nick)
   * Dancing Programs (Patsy w/ Nick)
   * Generative Design (Casey)

10 Print is not a game. It does not present itself as a game. It has no playable character. And aside from stopping the endless progression of the drawing loop, the person at the screen has no opportunity for interaction. The person may try to solve the maze, find various paths through, but these attempts are frustrated by the continuous progression of the maze at it scrolls up the screen. By this criteria, 10 PRINT seems an unlikely object of study.

Since the earliest studies of digital culture, writing about literary hypertext and game studies, much has been made of the potential, possibility, and power of interactivity. Hypertexts afford the reader the opportunity to engage in navigating the text beyond mere page turning. The interactivity of video games immerses the player in the gameworld. Certainly the early 21st century discourse on web 2.0 upholds a similar engagement through user actions and contributions, writing blogs, correcting and expanding wikis, tweeting.

However, this last example makes clear the oversights of the previous, namely that interactivity is framed as an activity that occurs between the user and the system at the level of the interface.

As the BASIC and Commodore 64 chapters make clear, 10 PRINT circulates in a cultural moment that privileges interaction at the level of the program, the lines of code.

A program is in process. It is part of a process. It is an excerpt from a process. It is part of a larger engagement. It is a stub for programs to come.

10 Print

As mentioned in the introduction, 10 Print begins with a line a number following the convention of BASIC programs. In fact, for this version of BASIC, since the program is written in PROGRAM mode, it must have a line number. However, the line number is not a necessary element of the program even on these early Commodore computers. The program could be written in DIRECT mode as:

for a=1 to 2 step 0:print chr$(205.5+rnd(1));:next a

As this program remains perpetually at 1, the program continues to print the randomly chosen characters from the original program. Arguably, having learners type this code into the command line would serve the demonstration even better than 10 Print, since it allows the beginner to focus on the single line and its output.

The 10 of 10-Print is a potent signfier of potential, of code to come, of the partiality of the program and indeed all programs, of the need for editing and correcting.