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by cbd1984 4140 days ago
> if statements with bodies that only jump to labels and contain nothing else in their bodies.

For extra verisimilitude, you'd have to re-invent the 'arithmetic if' statement. Since most programmers working now have no idea what that is, I'll explain:

    IF (A-B) 10,15,45
That is an 'arithmetic if' statement; it means "If A-B < 0, goto line 10. If A-B == 0, goto line 15. If A-B > 0, goto line 45."

That's it. You can't change which number it compares the expression to. You can't change the fact it's just a conditional goto with a somewhat more involved than usual conditional. (You can work around these things, but it involves doing more by hand, which languages should ameliorate.)

That was introduced to the high-level language world in an ancient version of FORTRAN, apparently copied by some BASIC dialects which didn't know any better, and then totally ignored for decades, a trend I heartily endorse.