ZX Computings - OpenLibra

ms, arid I time you convince somebody
gramm-l to buy a ZX81, get them to buy
/wards a I the book as well. .. and then
ctorials, I borrow it. The cartoons are
jns and ) great, and who knows, you
v games may pick up a trick or two.
mntandl "PEEK, POKE, BYTE and
ling very I RAM", Shiva Publishing Ltd,
The pro-1 ISBN 0 906812 1 78.
and' well} ZX81 BASIC BOOk
The ZX81 BASIC Book, pubn
and at-1 lished by Newnes Microcomk,
whichl puter Books, is more staid in apsuccess-1
proach than the others reviewing
yet ed in this section of ZX Commanual.
I j puting, and for that reason is
of great sure to appeal to schools,
new ZX Although the approach is fairly
the book straight, the book is far from
i a couple dull, with witty (?) chapter titles
enced ZX like "Gone out, bizzy, back
that next soon" to introduce sub-
SUMMER 198 ZX COMPUTING SUMMER 1382
routines, and "Graphics ride
again!"
The book methodically
covers the ins and outs of the
ZX81 starting with general information
on what computers
can do, followed by a short introduction
to computer languages
and binary arithmetic,
and then a brief section on what
a program is — using a sample
'program' describing certain
actions by Mickey Mouse in a
Walt Disney cartoon. Once
you've traversed this ground,
and worked out how to plug
your computer into the telly,
the book gets down to work.
Direct input commands are
covered, and — in a section
sure to confuse newcomers
who don't have a maths background,
or don't want to get in-
A. 1 V" R
Book reviews
volved in such things at such an
early stage — then the priority
of mathematical operators
(such as multiplication before
addition) is discussed. Already I
can sense newcomers flipping
past this section in exasperation,
looking for something a little
more directly relevant to
their needs.
We are already up to chapter
eight (some of the chapters are
only one or two pages long)
before the first particularly
useful information for first-time
bewildered users is presented.
The use of LET to assign values
to variables is explained,
followed (in subsequent
chapters) by such things as the
use of commas in PRINT formatting,
the use of the EDIT
function, trigonometrical func-
tions (you can see this is |ust
the sort of book your teachers
would leap on), and GOTO and
FOR/NEXT loops.
The book would be, I
believe, fairly heavy going,
despite its simplicity, for a person
who has just picked up a
computer for the first time, but
when used as a text to guide
pupils who have the benefits of
a live teacher on the spot,
would be very useful indeed. It
is difficult to imagine why the
material has been presented in
this order, with GOTO assigned
a lower priority than converting
radians to degrees, and loading
and saving programs is considered
less important than finding
natural logarithms of
square roots.
If you are teaching a class of
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