This one's a goodie - it's designed to take up where the more pedestrian clutch of guides and the user manual leave off - how to get down to some fairly serious programming work once the basics have been mastered.

It contains 30 programs which progressively take the user through programming techniques. Each program is prefaced by one to four pages of explanation under the headings 'Program Type', 'Objectives', 'Summary' and a rundown on the 'Program Structure'.

The listings have been reproduced on the page at 32 columns wide, so they will appear exactly as they do on the screen. As a further neat aid, the last program is called Checksum. This adds up the characters and spaces in the program to give a unique number so the program can be checked to ensure it has been typed in correctly.

Although it would be nice to see some production quality working its way into books of this type, users by now probably expect the daisywheel output for the text and the good old dot matrix on the listings. The book is also spiral bound, so although this always feels rather makeshift, the book will outlast the considerable pounding and spine bending it is almost certainly destined to undergo as a micro-side companion.

Ian Scales