As well as being a useful collection of games programs, this book also emphasises its other aim of developing the programming skills of the reader. In view of this, it is really quite astonishing how badly written, in my view, many of the programs are.

BBC Basic, which is used on the Electron, is one of the best versions of Basic on any micro for writing clear, readable, well structured programs. Yet this book chooses to ignore nearly all the features which make this such a good Basic in favour of a style of programming that was out of date ten years ago.

Considerable use is made of subroutines using GOSUB instead of the preferable procedures. REPEAT...UNTIL, so often such a natural form of expression, is never mentioned, neither is IF...THEN...ELSE; there is no use of integer variables, no meaningful variable names, little use of lower case text and many examples of inelegant programming.

What is so ironic is that the text accompanying each program is really quite good, with helpful analysis of the program, and suggestions for modifications and enhancements. Clearly many Electron users will be tempted by a book of games at the reasonable price of £5.95.

Even so, I cannot bring myself to recommend a book which makes such bad use of BBC Basic. It is no way to encourage newcomers to computing to write programs.