64. These programs were often graphic demos or meant to illustrate a technical quirk of the computer's architecture; the text accompanying the graphics demo programs would avoid explicitly describing the resultant image, enticing the reader to type it in. History Type-in programs preceded the home computer era. As David H. Ahl wrote in 1983: Most early computer magazines published type-in programs. The professional and business-oriented journals such as Byte and Popular Computing printed them less frequently, often as a test program to illustrate a technical topic covered in the magazine rather than an application for general use. Consumer-oriented publications such as Compute! and Family Computing ran several each issue. The programs were sometimes specific to a given home computer and sometimes compatible with several computers. Platform-specific magazines such as Compute!'s Gazette (VIC-20 and Commodore 64) and Antic (Atari 8-bit family), since they only had to print one version of each program, were able to print more, longer listings. Although type in programs were usually copyrighted, like the many games in BASIC Computer Games, authors often encouraged users to modify them, adding capabilities or otherwise changing them to suit their needs. Many authors used the article accompanying the type-ins to suggest modifications for the reader and programmer to perform. Users would sometimes send their changes back into the magazine for later publication. This could be considered a predecessor to open source software, but today most open source licenses specify that code be available in a machine-readable format. Antic stated in 1985 that its staff "spends a good portion of our time diligently combing the incoming submissions for practical application programs. We receive a lot of disk directory programs, recipe file storers, mini word processors, and other rehashed versions of old ideas". While most type-ins were simple games or utilities and likely only to hold a user's interest for a short time, some were very ambitious, rivaling commercial software. Perhaps the most famous example is the type-in word processor SpeedScript, published by Compute!'s Gazette and Compute! for several 8-bit computers starting in 1984. Compute! also published SpeedScript, along with some accessory programs, in book form. It retained a following into the next decade as users refined and added capabilities to it. Compute! discontinued type-in programs in May 1988, stating "As computers and software have grown more powerful, we've realized it's not possible to offer top quality type-in programs for all machines. And