10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost
Jeremy Douglass, Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas
Casey Reas, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter
10 PRINT is a book about a one-line Commodore 64 BASIC program, published in November 2012.
We’ve updated this page in late 2022:Book purchases support the nonprofit organizations The Electronic Literature Organization (to which all royalties are being donated) and The MIT Press , the book's publisher.
This book takes a single line of code—the extremely concise BASIC program for the Commodore 64 inscribed in the title—and uses it as a lens through which to consider the phenomenon of creative computing and the way computer programs exist in culture. The authors of this collaboratively written book treat code not as merely functional but as a text—in the case of 10 PRINT, a text that appeared in many different printed sources—that yields a story about its making, its purpose, its assumptions, and more. They consider randomness and regularity in computing and art, the maze in culture, the popular BASIC programming language, and the highly influential Commodore 64 computer.
There’s been a lot of 10 PRINT relevant work that has happened in the demoscene, too!
Thanks to @BedfordLvlExp on Twitter for pointing out that the following corrections should be made, all on page 229:
"leaving two more twenty-five-character rows to fill" should read "leaving two more forty-character rows to fill."
"the thirty-two pixel borders on the left and right and thirty-five pixel borders on the top and bottom were" should be "this border region, which can be set to different colors, just like the background, was"
"eliminates the need for such a border, though the Commodore 64’s KERNAL nevertheless draws it" should be "eliminates the underlying need for the border, though this characteristic visual element is stil drawn"
"In addition to wrapping text automatically, the VIC-II" should be "In addition to wrapping text automatically, code in ROM"