Proper BASIC

Personal Computer News

Richard King

'Proper Basic' by Brian Walsh, published by John Wiley at £12.50 (hardback, 397 pages) The title attracted me, and I hoped for a good meaty book on making Basic work reliably, but I was disappointed. The book doesn't teach Basic 'properly' (whatever that means), since the only aspects covered are the 'legitimate' uses of the language. For example, it describes Sinclair ZX-81 Basic as well as the use WHILE...WEND and such-like in GWBasic, however the author makes little attempt to show how you can synthesise such structures perfectly adequately in dialects which don't have them. As a result, much of the code is clumsy and has many GOTOS and other constructs for which Basic has often, and justifiably, been criticised. It's the sort of book which unfortunate Computer Science students will be instructed to read, and in my opinion exemplifies the reasons why academic instruction in this subject is not the best way to learn. The problem is that 'real' programming as opposed to the 'theoretical' variety is as much a question of bending and creative abuse of the rules as it is of strict adherence to them, and books such as Proper Basic refuse to recognise this. All is not lost, however, since the book does have some redeeming uses as a reference book concerning the differences between the many dialects of the language. Like many academic works it is extremely thorough and covers the full spectrum ranging from ZX-81 Basic through Pet and Microsoft Basics to Vax and ICL 2900 Basic.