Diversions

[rj_anderson]

Courtesy of Patrick, a couple of cute little diversions:





I always did want a hedgehog.



You are 'programming in QBASIC'. This programming language (of which the acronym stands for 'Quick Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code'), which is so primitive that it cannot easily be used for any purpose involving the Internet nor even sound, was current more than a decade ago.

You are independent, in a good way. When something which you need cannot be found, you make it yourself. In writing and in talking with people, you value clarity and precision; your friends may not realize how important that is. When necessary, you are prepared to be a mediator in conflicts between your friends. You are very rational, and you think of things in terms of logic and common sense. Unfortunately, your emotionally unstable friends may be put off by your devotion to logic; they may even accuse you of pedantry and insensitivity. Your problem is that programming in QBASIC has been obsolete for a long time.


What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

10 print "ph33r my mad programming skillz!";
20 goto 10

Comments

[kerravonsen]

The scary thing is that I understood the code fragment.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

What's not to understand? It's BASIC! ;)

And it is also pretty much the full extent of my programming skills.

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Tiggy is cute.

[infiniteviking]

Ha, I remember Basic! My dad used it on the TRS-80 when I was a kid!

Our computer was in color -- orange on black -- and it could actually play the William Tell Overture one note at a time. B)

[owl]

Oh, my goodness, QBASIC!! What a long time ago that was!

[pgoodman13.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed. :)

[tenebraeli.livejournal.com]

Not only do I very much enjoy the obsolete skill results (I totally understand the code too, and used to put it on my computers at high school, because when you're seventeen, that sort of thing seems the pinnacle of hilarity), but I am *very* pleased to find that you have an LJ.

I can't recall the exact date I found "Touching Indigo" but it was years ago, when I was first granted net access by a friend, and it has always remained one of my favorite DW fan stories of all time. You are a tremendously good writer, and I simply have to add you to my flist.

Finding out that you have an LJ, was like finding out that Pamela Dean, Caroline Stevermer, Peg Kerr, and Kate Orman have LJs. Just makes my day.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

!!!!!!!

Wow. I'm... wow. That's a very nice thing to say and I'm honoured that you feel that way. Thank you very much!

[wolf550e.livejournal.com]

1. Only ALGOL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL)-derived languages like Pascal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_programming_language) and C (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_programming_language) require/accept the semicolon an an expression terminator. BASIC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_programming_language) requires newlines instead (non free form syntax).
2. BASIC is non case sensitive for it was used on machines with not enough characters to provide for both minuscule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuscule) and majuscule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majuscule), and thus it is canonically written in ALL CAPS.
3. l33t is BAD.
4. Nobody likes a know-it-all. :-(

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

You are right about #2 (though IMO, if you didn't have to use the shift key to type it in the first place, it's just as "right" to type it without the shift key now), but you are wrong about #1. On the Commodore PET, which was the first computer I ever used, you typed

10 PRINT "WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL"
20 GOTO 10

to get an endlessly scrolling screen of

WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL
WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL
WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL

etc.

However, if you wanted it to look rilly pretty, you typed it with the semicolon at the end, thus resulting in this:

WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL WOLF IS A KNOW-IT-ALL

etc.

For you, that's all ancient history. But I lived it, dude. Yes, I myself wore out the "A" key on the PET by playing too much "Space Invaders" and (the woefully underappreciated) "Green Slime", both of which existed solely on battered cassette tapes in our Enrichment classroom.

Good times, good times. I remember when the VIC-20 was, like, the coolest thing ever because (gasp!) it had COLOUR. And you could play cool games on it, like "E.T. the Extraterrestrial". But then of course the Commodore 64 came along and it was obvious that computers simply could not get any better than this...