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Compute!
Books
£14.95
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A number of books are now arriving for the ST but
most are still very much on a beginners or introductory level. This
one clearly states that it is 'an introduction' and treated as such
is a worthwhile investment. The book is clearly aimed at those
owners who want to write programs for their machines but who have
not yet made the decision to learn one of the more advanced
programming languages. It therefore concentrates on the two
languages supplied with the ST, BASIC and LOGO, with a smattering of
FORTH thrown in.
After a brief introduction about setting up the
machine the first chapter introduces LOGO from the point of view of
graphics and gives several basic examples of shape drawing and
movement of the turtle. Only 25 pages are devoted to LOGO and, as
can be expected, the coverage is fairly rudimentary. BASIC fares
much better with the substantial portion of the book devoted to this
language. There are many programming examples which are generally
quite short and thus easily typed which will whet your appetite for
more advanced techniques later. Again these are mainly concerned
with producing shapes of various sorts but there is plenty to give
you ideas of your own.
The chapter on Sound and Music is more interesting
as, strangely, hardly anyone seems to have explored the sound
capabilities of the ST. At least you will be able to start producing
some music and sound effects with the information given here which
generally has not been easily available elsewhere.
Much of the power of the ST is not accessible from
BASIC but there are commands which can be used to access many of the
routines built into the operating system and VDISYS is one such. A
whole chapter is devoted to this command and, for someone who has
programmed before, this is probably the most valuable chapter in the
book giving a taste of just what is possible with the ST. The
remainder of the book, including the chapter on Forth seems to be
there for the sake of filling up the book but will provide
interesting information to the first time user.
Overall very much an introductory book which users
experienced with 8-bit Ataris might find somewhat dull but
worthwhile for anyone who has those language disks and wants to do
something on his ST.
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