I also cut my programming teeth on the Vic-20 (actually I started with a TRS-80). And even then such variables were named with the "string" pronunciation suffix. I also have 30+ years, starting with digital theory (when I was 9 years old!) Some groups back then were calling "bits" (Binary digITS) as "binits" (BINary digIGTS). Nomenclature has gone through a lot of changes in the past several decades. That some manuals were calling things like "A$" as "A-String", and that this was repeated, meant that there was a likely source. A lot of schools and shops tended to have their own vocabularies back in the day. Some became common, some didn't. It's the height of arrogance to say that just because you never heard of the term at the time you started in the field that it wasn't in usage somewhere. I think even Knuth referred to groups of characters as "strings", but I lost my copies of "The Art of Computer Programming" and I can't recall for sure. And they were published in 1968, which were published well before any of the "old timers" here have claimed they started. Given that history, I'm calling "bullsh*t" on them.