This is another book on Basic programming for the beginner and with just over 300 pages is positively packed with ideas and information, sufficient to keep the new Electron user busy for quite some time. The book contains many example programs and screen displays to illustrate the techniques described, and to provide a storehouse of routines to interest and entertain the user.

The book starts with a useful description of the Electron, its keyboard and its operation. It is very pleasing to see the idea of the procedure being introduced at a very early stage in the book (in the second chapter) and procedures form the basis of the majority of the examples throughout the book.

There is a useful chapter on saving and loading programs on cassette followed by basic programming information. The chapters progressively describe all the structured features of Electron Basic including REPEAT...UNTIL and IF...THEN...ELSE. There is no mention of GOTO or any of the unstructured forms of IF...THEN until very late in the book, wihch does avoid introducing the user to any bad programming habits. There is detailed coverage of all aspects of sound and graphics on the Electron, including animation techniques and user-defined characters.

One point of criticism is the quality of presentation and reproduction. The text appears to have been printed directly from computer-generated material on a daisywheel printer, with rather variable quality. The program listings are in at least three different typefaces including dot matrix printer listings and two styles of daisywheel printer listings. This has the unfortunate result that the figure zero is sometimes printed as 'O' and sometimes as '0'. Consistency of presentation is desirable, while it would have improved the general appearance of the book if the text had been typeset.

One further point is that example programs and screen displays are quite often allowed to break up the main flow of the text, and on several occasions I was not sure where to continue reading.

I liked both the content and the style of presentation of this book, and with so much packed into its 300+ pages it really is good value at the price. It also has the rare merit with regard to structured programming of practising what it preaches from beginning to end.