This Christmas, many more people have been introduced to the world of computing. By the end of January, hopefully, a good number of them will be thinking about putting their micros to serious uses, even if just writing programs. One thing that should be taught from the start is standards.

The world would be a mess (well, I mean a lot worse) if we didn't have standards. We wouldn't have the simplest of things like rulers, pencils, cupboards, cars, because all the sizes and measurements would be different. The same should apply in the computer industry.

When computers first came on the scene, there was no need for standards, there were only one or two around, no-one had to bother about connecting their micro up to something else. But now it's different. We would get a lot further if there were proper standard connections between, say, a printer and a computer, instead of about four 'standards' (but all with different pin connections) and over 100 non-standards.

The same applies to software. Look at Basic and Forth. In 1979 a group of people got together to form the Forth 'standard', at the same time another group of people defined Fig Forth. Now there are always arguments going on as to which is best.

However, we must not become too standard, going as far as having a standard computer, as the Americans and Japanese are working on. If we do that, we will not be making use of the technology again: the Spectravideo computers, uses a TI graphic chip, General Instruments sound chip and a Z80A CPU.

No-one can persuade me those chips are the best in the world and will remain so for at least 20 years. They've already had their day, they should be gone by now.

Nevertheless it is time micro manufacturers got together and made some plans.

Chris Haine
Rugby, Warks.

I quite agree - the problem is treading that tricky middle path to promote compatibility and encourage innovation at the same time. - Ed