Likewise - but of course in Sinclair BASIC it was mandatory because every command had to begin with a keyword - a fact enforced by the fact that the cursor started out as a flashing [K], and every key on the keyboard was mapped to directly enter a keyword in that mode. LET was on the 'L' key. You literally couldn't type "a = 1" into a Spectrum/ZX81 - you couldn't type an 'a' unless you were at an [L] cursor prompt, which would only appear after you had chosen a keyword. Typing an 'a' at a [K] cursor would get you the keyword NEW.
I wonder if you, like me, were also completely thrown when you first encountered a programming language where you didn't also have to enter line numbers...
> I wonder if you, like me, were also completely thrown when you first encountered a programming language where you didn't also have to enter line numbers...
Haha, yes, totally! For me this was AMOS on the Amiga (a Basic variant). I was so thrown I started by using them anyway as they were supported by the interpreter - it just treated them as labels.
I soon stopped though when I discovered it didn't reorder based on number, so you ended up with
I wonder if you, like me, were also completely thrown when you first encountered a programming language where you didn't also have to enter line numbers...