Don't understand the "...One of the (mostly hated) features of the (mostly hated) language was that any statement required a line number...". Basic was a wonderful entry level language - user friendly and understandable. It introduced countless kids to programming. It never pretended to be some enterprise level, hardcore language and it was certainly more readable than the code accompanying the article:

cmd=$(sed -n "/$label:/{:a;n;p;ba};" $0 | grep -v ':$')