An Introduction to Programming the Sinclair QL

ZX Computing

QL software may be slow in appearing but there are books on the QL all over the place! AN INTRODUCTION TO PROGRAMMING THE SINCLAIR Often in the past I have extolled the virtues of books from the Babani publishing house. Their standard is a book that is concise, clear, written by someone who understands the subject well, and, at around £2.00, excellent value for money. Contributing to this success is a consistent style in which the salient points of the subject are described by example and supported by a brief discussion of their use followed by recommendations for development sufficient to encourage readers to investigate each and learn by themselves. Perhaps this style has been successful because until now the computers and subjects dealt with have lent themselves to a simplistic approach. The Sinclair QL is, by comparison, an advanced machine with, a complex computer language. So, can 'An Introduction to Programming the Sinclair QL' maintain both the form and style of earlier books? Does the more advanced machine not require a weightier tome? If so, then the authors R.A. and J.W. Penfold do not realise it. The book is styled like the others: 100 pages divided into ten chapters. The text, as always, is supported by clear and simplistic line diagrams and program listings which while dumped to print by a low quality dot matrix printer are sufficiently legible. The text tackles the instructions and functions of SUPERBASIC one at a time, reducing the complexity of the language to its most basic. Each chapter deals with a general area, beginning with 'Variables and Arrays' and subsequent chapters covering INPUT and PRINT, decisions, the sound generator, graphics, structured programming and interfaces. The authors are sufficiently confident that upon completion of chapters one to eight the reader will be mastering SUPERBASIC that chapter nine is dedicated to an introduction of elementary machine code. There is little doubt that it is all here in the 100 pages between the covers, but I would dispute that a reader would be anticipating machine code after such a lesson. I found that most of the topics were glossed over often at such speed that many stood no chance of sinking in. According to the cover notes, 'The authors adopt a step-by-step approach, starting with the fundamentals and then move on to more advanced topics'. But this really didn't seem to be the case, and though the cover notes also state that the reader should be able to write simple programs and then progresses on to more challenging things, I think that anything beyond the simplest of programs would present a challenge. This book is an account of BASIC - real basic BASIC, rather than SUPER BASIC. It will introduce the reader to the QL, but does not show how to program in SUPERBASIC, for there is nothing in the text to introduce or show how the advanced features of SUPERBASIC (as opposed to ordinary 8ASIC) may be used. It does not 'compliment the information supplied by the manufacturer', rather it ignores it. It is not a badly written book, and the format is still a good one, it is simply deficient, and so of little value. "An Introduction to Programming the Sinclair QL' is published by Babani, written by R.A. and J.W. Penfold, and costs £1.95 (ISBN 0-85934-125-9).