QBasic, my first programming language

This post is a continuation of my history with computers, after learning hexadecimal to cheat at SimCity 2000. GORILLA.BAS In the ancient past, software occasionally included delightful hidden gems or "Easter eggs" (as opposed to the modern trend of hiding personal data exfiltration). MS-DOS 5+ included two bonus games, if you knew how to find them: A Scorched Earth-like artillery game, GORILLA.BAS A snake game, NIBBLES.BAS GORILLA.BAS (1991) Both of these games targeted QBasic, a development environment for a dialect of BASIC that also came with MS-DOS. All you needed to do was run QBASIC.EXE, File -> Open one of the source files, and hit F5 to get started. The fact that these games were distributed in source form made it obvious to even me, just a kid, that I might be able to create my own games in QBasic. That was all the motivation I needed. QBasic Getting started I'm going to take a minute to marvel at the concept of learning a programming language without internet access. While…