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Another batch of books comes under the scrutiny of reviewer Tom Vests
SOME PEOPLE cannot help taking their Sinclair micros seriously, while others find it necessary to inject elements of humour and occasionally farce into their dealings with the machine.
It is a tradition dating from the early days of the big mainframe computers. Computer people then were sharply-divided into two groups. One resembled the popular view of a trainee bank manager, while the other was a band of cheerful or manic individualists. Both groups produced equally good ideas and programs.
Those Sinclair enthusiasts who are writing books on the machines have already divided into the traditional groups. While this reviewer prefers the exuberant individualists, it is all a matter of style. People who approach programming seriously derive just as much pleasure from it as those who take it in the spirit of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Publishing house Macmillan leaves no doubt as to the approach of Randle Hurley's book with the title, The Sinclair ZX-81 - programming for real applications. Other computer titles from Macmillan include three manuals on Basic programming and one on digital techniques.
Hurley has aimed his book at someone who is not a computer expert and who has read the Sinclair manual without understanding some of the more esoteric functions and techniques completely. More significantly he adds that the reader maybe a teacher, as he is himself.
The programs and techniques are based on his experience with the ZX-81 at his school. He assumes that the reader has the 16K RAM pack with the machine.
It is not a book for the small businessman or club secretary who wishes mainly to have a system up and running and to acquire a little programming technique on the side but it is one for anyone who wishes to extend their knowledge of the Sinclair and wishes to make use of it in a practical way. It would certainly be useful for any teacher who wished to make use of a Sinclair.
The tone overall is schoolmasterish in the best sense. Hurley lets you know what he intends to do and then shows you how to do it. At the beginning he provides a large number of tips on how to approach programming, particularly on the most difficult part of all in writing long programs - how to keep track of what you are doing.
He blasts through them at a rapid rate to reach the heart of the matter, programming techniques; many users will probably find themselves back-tracking to pick up that wrinkle on program documentation they had forgotten but no-one will be able to say that they were not warned.
Programs of particular interest to teachers include rank ordering, examination results analysis and a reading age program to accompany the low-grade word processing system. Hurley promises a more useful version of the latter in a book being prepared on ZX-81 machine code.
The programs and the listings all illustrate useful techniques and the lines of program code are explained comprehensively, line-by-line - a major plus in books on the Sinclair.
In keeping with his aim of having the reader push the ZX-81 much further than anyone expected when it was launched, Hurley offers a number of hardware modifications in the last chapter. They are a modified power supply, extra money and hooking the Sinclair to a standard keyboard. They are not for the electronically-illiterate and require the ability to read and understand a circuit diagram, as well as to solder neatly, which Hurley suggests as the only pre-requisite.
Where Hurley employs 160 pages to show programming techniques gently, Andrew Hewson takes his readers through his Hints and Tips for the ZX-81 at a gallop in 75 pages. The book is based on one of the same title for the ZX-80 with the requisite amendments and, more important, deletions.
It is not designed for anyone who has yet to bang their heads for about 50 hours working-out Basic programming techniques. Most of it consists of solutions to problems of which the beginner is not yet aware and explanation is kept to a minimum.
The general style is along the lines of 'So you ran into that problem, too - here is the solution which seems best to me at the moment. Oh, and by the way, here are two things to avoid because they can really tie you in knots'.
There are good, sound suggestions and techniques in the book but, in my opinion, it is designed for the committed and dedicated, although others could find it useful as a reference.
I liked particularly Hewson's warning about machine code programming - "Unfortunately writing lengthy programs in machine code is rather like solving The Times crossword. It is a pleasant intellectual challenge once you get the hang of it but until that time it can be a time-consuming and frustrating business. They are worth keeping in mind.
There is very little to say about Mark Harrison's Byteing deeper into your ZX-81 beyond my opinion that it is one of the best manuals on offer for the beginner. It assumes a small amount of general knowledge on the part of the reader but starts by describing what a computer is and leads through to the most advanced techniques of programming the ZX-81.
For anyone who has always avoided all things technical, Peek, Poke, Byte and RAM by Ian Stewart and Robin Jones would probably be a better book.
It makes no assumptions of knowledge and is well laid-out. The idiosyncratic asides along the lines of 'My cat did such and such' could be irritating to those who dislike that kind of thing.