Yes, you could be right there. Perhaps that was why.
I do remember being grateful (in later versions of BASIC) for the RENUMBER command, which does not appear in this early version, but which allowed you to create space between lines to insert new ones.
The other reason that it might have seemed pertinent to the writer was that CARDBASIC (page 50), in which each line of program appears on a card, also requires you to place a line number on a card, and so the order of cards in the deck would not have been important.
It’s a really nicely written manual, clearly targeted at the novice.
Appendix B (Limitations on BASIC) gives a rule-of-thumb for the maximum length of a program as "in general about 2 feet".
It was evidently possible to create a complex program in 2 feet as they make the suggestion (on page 46) that a GOTO or IF might jump to a REM statement.
However, some unusual advice is given on page 4 which might have caused confusion: Because “line numbers also serve to specify the order in which the statements are performed by the computer … you could type your program in any order”.
Seems like a perfectly reasonable naming scheme to me. Anyone foolish enough to think that the variables are there to hold the values 3, 5 and 7 is probably wasting their time on the code in the first place.
Besides, it made you read the code and the comments.
I do remember being grateful (in later versions of BASIC) for the RENUMBER command, which does not appear in this early version, but which allowed you to create space between lines to insert new ones.
The other reason that it might have seemed pertinent to the writer was that CARDBASIC (page 50), in which each line of program appears on a card, also requires you to place a line number on a card, and so the order of cards in the deck would not have been important.