What was your earliest computer memory?

For a lot of people my age it was learning the very first and most basic program. You’d see a computer running in a shop or in a classroom, displaying a prompt, inviting you to interact with it in some way.

The most easy to remember and universal bit of code that would run on any 1980s home computer would be this:

10 PRINT "Usually something cheeky"
20 GOTO 10

Typing RUN would display the text across the screen. Depending on the computer it would either scroll in an infinite loop, or display a scroll message at the bottom.

This programming language was called BASIC, and true to its name was intended to be an easily understandable plain English programming language. It was slow as the computer would have to interpret each line into machine code to run, but it was quite effective. There were a few versions available but the best by far was BBC BASIC implemented on the BBC Micro computer. In a rather legendary test, a BBC Micro was able to run BASIC almost as efficiently as a CRAY supercomputer. No wonder then it’s creator would go on to be part of the team who designed the ARM processor, a descendent of which is probably powering the device you’re reading this on.

Back then code editors, or even scrolling up and down the screen wasn’t usually possible. Line numbers would be typed in to divide up your code. The most basic program above could be altered by typing:

10 PRINT "Something even more cheeky"

and then RUN again.

That was it – the most basic BASIC program ever.

This got my thinking – are there any similar examples of an easily memorable program that you could type into a computer in a shop and leave running?

It would have to fit the universal BASIC criteria, be easy enough to remember, and have a level of ‘wow’.