Counting Upward by one Most Useful

A FOR loop can be used because the starting and ending values are known in advance. But what starting and ending values? Two things are being counted upward: the number of gross (counting up by one's) and the number of items (counting up by 144's). The table looks like this:

Number of Gross       Number of Items
    1                     144
    2                     288
    3                     432
           . . .
   10                     1440

You might be tempted to use a FOR loop that looks like this:

FOR ITEMS = 144 TO 1440 STEP 144 
 . . . 

NEXT ITEMS

This looks reasonable, since the number of items steps up by 144 each time. But the number of gross goes up by one each time. When you have a choice, almost always it is a good idea to count upward by ones. Here is a version of the program that does that:

PRINT "Number of Gross", "Number of Items"

FOR GROSS = 1 TO 10
    PRINT GROSS, GROSS * 144
NEXT GROSS

END

Loops that count upward by ones are easier to understand than loops that count in other patterns. Always use an upward-by-one counting loop if you can.