The book starts with a good introduction which explains the format of the listings and text; it also thoughtfully tells you to skip the first chapter if you're not a novice.

Predictably, the book begins with a chapter on setting up the Vic. This is certainly useful to newcomers, but such information is by now widely published. Never mind, let's press on.

By chapter two, we are into programming styles and techniques, and then Basic commands and statements. This chapter is well presented and covers every Basic statement in great detail. Chapter four is entitled 'Entertaining with Basic', but the purpose of the chapter is most unclear. Anyway, it contains a few simple Basic programs and a detailed explanation of how they work. The next two chapters are much the same but cover education and home use. The only really useful program is a bar chart program which at least gives the insight into how these charts are created.

There's a simple section on graphics; creating and using them from the very simple PRINTing command to user-defined graphics and Hi-res - not enough of the latter two subjects, though. A chapter on Music does include a piano keyboard program and a few reasonable sound effects.

Chapter nine takes us into machine code (at last). Here we have a reasonable explanation of binary which deals with calculations in binary and hexadecimal. That's about it for machine code except for a couple of poor examples of plotting (positioning the cursor) and a few of the system routine entry points.

Chapter ten has literally a few words to say on printes, drives, cartridges, joysticks and memory expansion. There is also a very scanty set of Appendices bringing up the rear.

It is difficult to know what to say about such a book. The first few chapters were reasonable and did manage to whet the appetite, but the remainder is very disappointing and, considering the price, is not very informative or instructive.