QL Superbasic

Personal Computer News

John Lettice

'QL Superbasic' by Dr A Berk, published by Granada at £6.95 (paperback, 165 pages). QL SuperBasic, by Dr A Berk, is a sort of combination guide to SuperBasic and introduction to computers. As far as the latter is concerned it's no worse than some, but as a guide to SuperBasic it might as well be a guide to the ZX81. Get this for an introduction to loops: 10 LET N=0 PRINT 12*N: LET N=N : GOTO 10 Fine as it goes, perhaps, but Dr Berk sees fit to spin this one out to 17 lines including REM statements. He makes a virtue of this soon after by introducing multi-statement lines, but I suspect many people will have nodded off by then. But my major objection is that the book seems upside down to me. Dr Berk approaches the QL just as you'd approach a 'normal' machine, and the most important thing about the QL is that it isn't normal. QL SuperBasic is radically different from most dialects of Basic, and is surely an opportunity to teach newcomers more about structured programming. I'd say it's a grave mistake to start out teaching boring old Basic, and not introduce the structures until later.