who learned computing on the 8-bit microcomputers of the late 1970s and early 1980s. BASIC was often the only language available on those machines (on home computers, usually present in ROM), and therefore the obvious, and simplest, way to program in machine language was to use BASIC to POKE the opcode values into memory. Doing much low-level coding like this usually came from lack of access to an assembler. An example of the generic usage of POKE and PEEK is in Visual Basic for Windows, where DDE can be achieved with the LinkPoke keyword. See also Killer poke Type-in program Self-modifying code Pointer (computer programming) References Microcomputer software BASIC commands Cheating in video games Computer memory