80s kids became coders with ease because 8-bit computers booted into a simple dev environment running BASIC. Computer mags of the era were stuffed with type-in programs that anyone patient enough could run, and some were very long indeed. But the most famous on the Commodore 64 was just a single line of code. Here it is:10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The 10 identifies the line number. PRINT puts text on the screen. CHR refers to the ASCII-like character set built in to the system and $ tells it you're picking with a number, and (205.5+RND(1)) is the number: 205.5 plus, randomly, 1. Finally, GOTO 10 tells it to repeat the line. This doesn't sound like much, but the result is the random screen-filling maze you see above—a beautiful and astonishing result in 1982. And there's so much more to know about it: four decades later, 10 PRINT is a book about the wild potential of a single line of code.
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.
Available as a PDF, free and Free.
I couldn't resist "porting" it (replacing 205.5 with 204) to the Amstrad CPC, my own 8-bit haunt.
