Back to BASICs

I can still remember the first computer program I ever learned to code. It was two glorious lines of BASIC; as simple as it was eloquent:

10 PRINT "FARTS!"

20 GOTO 10

RUN

The resulting output was a repeating stream of FARTS! scrolling down the screen, which would continue to propagate until someone interrupted the loop, or the Universe ended — whichever came first.

Anyone who owned a computer running BASIC during the ‘80s and ’90s might have had a thick companion manual filled with programs, screensavers, and games; all of which had to be manually entered line by line. Sure, you could pop in a cartridge or load the program via an attached cassette drive, but what would be the fun in that?

A few months ago, I acquired a Raspberry Pi computer. For the uninitiated, a RaspPi is a tiny, low-cost computer the size of a credit card, which can be used in a multitude of projects: from home media servers to robotics, portable weather monitoring stations, retro gaming platforms, or running endless varieties of full desktop environments. You can even run some Windows applications on the newer models. 

It is the perfect project computer for anyone (kids and adults alike) who wants to learn to code. You can’t mess it up as everything is loaded from an SD card or USB thumb drive — any major mistake can be fixed by a simple reformat.

As I have access to an entire library of educational Udemy content via work, I’ve decided to take an introductory class on Python programming. I haven’t progressed much further than “Hello World” (or FARTS! as my BASIC counterpart is wont to do), but I always get kind of giddy to learn something new about computers and how they work.

So, quick question: any tech firms out there willing to pay top dollar to a middle-aged geek who knows how to output a lot of FARTS!? (Actually… don’t answer that.)