this book brought me so many hours of joy as a child. I typed these programs in and read it over and over again. I remember now parts that I didn't understand (like Nim) and being amazed at some things people could do in BASIC (https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=4).
> being amazed at some things people could do in BASIC
My first software engineering job out of highschool used a version of BASIC; I was originally hired as an "operator" because I didn't have a degree, and they wouldn't hire programmers without degrees. So they trained me on how to load 9-track tapes on a vacuum-column drive, as well as how to load up greenbar and run reports on the system. It was an IBM RS/6000 running AIX (my first encounter with Unix), and VT-100/Wyse-370 terminals via a serial concentrator - but our main system ran on top of that; it was called UniVERSE, and ran a variant of Pick BASIC:
They gave me access to the system, and their sysadmin gave me a copy of a "Learn Pick BASIC" book. The company was a small mom-n-pop shop that created insurance claims management software for small insurance companies administering our state's indigent health care system.
I started writing various pieces of software - an adventure game, playing with the printers (made one of them play music - not a good use of company resources), just having fun while in between actual "jobs" given to me by the real programmers (run this report, or load this tape). Well...someone was monitoring me and my coding.
They started to give me small tasks - fix this problem with this piece of code, or build this kind of report, or can you make the printer do this?
Within six months - after I had graduated a local tech school and got my "degree" - they hired me (at a pitiful rate that irks me today, but I was a young-n-dumb teenager at the time). I stayed there for a couple of years, learned more Unix, became intimately familiar with terminfo settings, helped to build a text-mode windowing system for their product, got involved with the Amiga scene...
Ultimately, it was my beginning of a career I enjoy and love to this day; but I do have to say I miss the Wyse-370 terminal (it had a Textronix vector graphics mode I played with as well - plus it was just a great terminal overall - they can still be purchased today, but supply vs demand has kept their cost high, so I've never purchased one).
For fun recently I ported zork to an esp32.