Title: Learning TIMEX/Sinclair
BASIC
Author: David A. Lien
Publisher: CompuSoft Publishing
535 Broadway
El Cajon, CA 92021
Price: $14.95 ppbk., 327 pps.
Far outdistancing the competition, Lien breaks away from the ZX/TS book pack with this stellar tutorial work. Like a breath of fresh air, Lien brings his expertise to Timex after success with IBM, TRS-80 and EPSON literature.
Lien flavors his tutorial with simple, clear explanations (a technophile’s dream), humor and reassurance. A friend who had never laid eyes on a Timex computer wrote programs to balance checkbooks and evaluate geometric functions within a few hours of opening the book. Perhaps more importantly, she felt comfortable with her ZX/TS. Lien’s book answered all her questions, compared with the uncertainties found in other ZX/TS books.
Learning covers complete BASIC concepts, and includes useful facts for beginners about cassette use, debugging simple programming mistakes and video display problems. Lien does not cover machine code or hardware modifications. The book contains 38 chapters of “Computer Assisted Instruction.” Chapters include cartoons, user-friendly instruction, self-checking exercises and summaries.
Despite its simplicity, young children may find the book’s language a bit over their heads (although they’ll love the cartoons). It seems geared towards adults who like clear explanations.
CompuSoft and Lien’s attention to layout created an easy-to-take visual appeal. They used lots of white space and big (9×7″) pages. A keyboard diagram shows key functions with the type styles that represent them.–LFV