BASIC Infinite Loop

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Current revision as of 08:55, 15 February 2021

"Am I doing this right?!"

BASIC is an early high-level programming language that became popular for home computers in the 1980s. The original Dartmouth BASIC spawned several different dialects of the language. In BASIC's heyday, it was common (either as a pastime or a prank) to create an infinite loop in BASIC that constantly fills the screen with the same line of text, and several instances of this appear in the Homestar Runner body of work. The BASIC code is simple:

10 print "NASA"
20 goto 10

Giving each line of code its own number (which is required in certain dialects), an instruction to print a line of text is performed, and then the next instruction points back to that. Until the program is interrupted or terminated, the program constantly prints that text.

[edit] Appearances

• Email 2 emails — In a segment where the email is being fast forwarded, Strong Bad runs the infinite loop on the Compy 386, set to print "STRONG BAD IS COOL!" repeatedly.
• Workin' on the Game — The still image shown during the entire cartoon shows the Apple IIe running with the infinite loop code in Applesoft BASIC on its screen. The text would read "STRONG BAD'S COOL GAME FOR ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE".
• Store — The October 2008 shirt of the month was of the Bad Graphics Ghost with the infinite loop meant to repeat the text "Boo!"
• @StrongBadActual tweet (26 Sep 2014) — In his very first Tweet, Strong Bad prints out an infinite loop that will print "TWITTER", asking if he's doing this right. Later that day, he printed out the result of the infinite loop, believing that it worked.
• Disk 4 of 12 - FriendlyWare — Strong Bad writes an infinite loop that prints "FRIENDLYWARE IS KINDA THE WORST".