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I first learned programming on a Wang 2200 computer in 1978, which used the Wang BASIC dialect. Wang BASIC was both very primitive (single letter or letter+number names, no local scope, fixed width strings) and very powerful (built array operations, including MAT SORT).

A year or two later I got a book from the library on PASCAL. I recall skimming through it at first and thinking: is this real code or pseudocode? I couldn't believe, eg, that one could test for set inclusion with a built-in primitive.



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