I'm a BBC owner of a year and a half and a strong believer in structured programming using the rich command set of BBC Basic.
However, I am concerned that unknowing parents are being pushed into buying an Electron or BBC Micro for their children because schools use BBCs. We've all seen the ads on the Sunday supplements and on TV saying that BBC Basic is the 'leading language in schools'. This is an inarguable fact but - and it's a big but! - the way Basic is taught in schools makes this meaningless.
In my experience, even if a school or college uses only BBCs, Basic is taught very much as it has always been. That is, the ELSE for IF...THEN is often not mentioned, variables used are often single letter rather than meaningful names and as far as procedures and multi-line functions go - forget it.
All the advantages of BBC Basic are ignored and, in effect, once familiarised with operation, children could apply their knowledge to any machine.
My advice to parents is buy the best they can afford, choose a well-supported machine and, most of all, encourage your children to extend their knowledge at home.
Finally, just to prove I'm not anti-Acorn, the BBC is still an excellent machine (if overpriced and starting to look old fashioned) and even the Electron has some good points.
25th August 1984
