alt Hacker NewsI dealt with ProvideX code for a Customer who was using an industry-specific customized version of MAS 90. I managed to see some of the source (under NDA) of the customizations and it was fucking horrifying-- line numbers and GOTOs and global variables. It makes my eyes burn a little thinking about it...
One feature that Business BASIC did have even way back in 1975 that I really appreciate is some form of exception handling: just about every I/O operation had, as a required argument, at least one line number to jump to in case of failure. Some required several, for different types of failures (file not found, I/O error, etc.).
That code you looked at must have been incredibly old! I think that BBj and ProvideX both added structured-programming features to make working in their environments at least somewhat tolerable. As intolerable as we find it today, Business BASIC was really a breath of fresh air in its time compared to the alternatives, like COBOL...