It was delightfully easy to build fully functioning text mode applications. I especially liked the picture clauses on form reads. When I later learned about curses it was a huge disappointment. curses/ncurses with tips from the xBase world would be great for those that need to write terminal applications.
@ row, col say "First Name:"
to draw a box:
@ top_row, top_left to bottom_row, bottom_right
there was built-in support for menus.
there were commands to save the screen to variable and then restore the screen.
main_screen = savescreen
restscreen(main_screen)
Everything was really simple. Forms were super easy. There was a command of the form:
@ row, col say "First name:" get first_name @ row+1, col say "Last name:" get last_name read
Each statement would be on a separate line:
@ x, y say "First name"
@ col2, y get first_name
@ x, y+2 say "Last name"
@ col2, y+2 get last_name
read