This is the cheapest of the five books reviewed this issue and represents good value for money. One of the best points with this book is the many example programs, some of them quite long, together with a description of how they were constructed. There is also a good chapter on "testing and debugging"; both points which are severely neglected in most books.

There are one or two points that I was not too keen on. For example, Mr Coats states that BBC Basic provides a special variable for formatting numbers. However, he then states "this is beyond the scope of this book". I find this a strange statement when this is a very useful command. This book again has a poor section on files. Subroutines are mentioned before procedures, when one might question why on earth subroutines are mentioned at all.