Perhaps, the world's most dangerous formula. At the time, I was 9 years old. It was the time of innocence, but no one could foresee the horror ahead. See, I had become fascinated with my friend's computer, and it turned out a friend of my mother's had an old ten year old Tandy they didn't want anymore. So I snatched it up and hoped to play games of Captain Keen into the wee hours of the night. I was dissapointed to find out that the computer could only run certain software:
BASIC
BASIC Tutorial
Well, at least at first I was dissapointed. Then I learned the BASIC could let me create my own games (or so the tutorial program boasted). I figured I'd have Lemmings up and running in no time. Turns out, I hadn't taken Algebra yet, so loops and arrays were a little beyond my brain's scope. However, input and output made perfect sense. Thus, my first program (recreated here in QBASIC):
DIM someword AS STRING
INPUT "What is your name?";someword
PRINT "Hello ";someword
INPUT "How do you feel?";someword
PRINT "I'm glad you feel ";someword
END
Well, at least I was smart enough to use the same variable twice. Now, I thought of myself as the child prodigy after this. I had made a computer do something, an amazing feat in my mind. Needless to say, I showed it off to my friends. Then came the death of innocence.
What is your name? Shit
Hello Shit
How do you feel? Crappy
I'm glad you feel Crappy
We thought putting bad words into the computer was really funny. That wasn't the end of it though. I couldn't predict what my friend would type in, forever scarring me:
What is your name? Bob
Hello Bob
How do you feel? me up
I'm glad you feel me up
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