This is not entirely true. BBC BASIC (certainly the versions I used on the Electron and Master 128) had both named sub-procedures and named functions, with local variables and allowing recursion. While limited in some ways they did allow programming without sight nor sound of GOTO/GOSUB, which I actually used to do.
You could even do away with line numbers with a little hackery: write your code in a text editor (View, as built-in to the Master series and which we had as an add-on to the Electron we had at home before that, was what I used), I forget how due to the mists of time but I had a method of having the file repeated as if typed from the keyboard (adding in the line numbers via AUTO) and executing it directly. I felt rather clever, particularly as I did it mainly because a CS teacher had said it was not possible!
> BBC BASIC […] had both named sub-procedures and named functions […]
OK, sounds great. I also remember the versions of Basic on the Amiga and Atari ST being perfectly adequate in this regard.
But this is never the version of Basic which people talk about! What you describe is not the version of Basic used by all those listings in magazines, or in the linked article. This is, for all intents and purposes, not the “80s style Basic” which everybody remembers with such apparent and baffling fondness.
> No naming, no abstractions, nothing.
This is not entirely true. BBC BASIC (certainly the versions I used on the Electron and Master 128) had both named sub-procedures and named functions, with local variables and allowing recursion. While limited in some ways they did allow programming without sight nor sound of GOTO/GOSUB, which I actually used to do.
You could even do away with line numbers with a little hackery: write your code in a text editor (View, as built-in to the Master series and which we had as an add-on to the Electron we had at home before that, was what I used), I forget how due to the mists of time but I had a method of having the file repeated as if typed from the keyboard (adding in the line numbers via AUTO) and executing it directly. I felt rather clever, particularly as I did it mainly because a CS teacher had said it was not possible!