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Tom Vests digs into the ZX avalanche
"THERE seems to be an infinite market for books on how to program in Basic. No matter how many books are published, there seems to be room for just 10 more".
This is one of Mark Charlton's comments in a chapter called What can you do with it? in his Gateway Guide to the ZX-81 and ZX-80 and anyone looking at the avalanche of books on the Sinclair is seeing only a small total of the titles which could be of interest to the Sinclair user.
A sure best-seller would be a guide to all the books but it would be likely to be out-of-date before anyone had a chance to buy it.
To return to the question of what you can do with your Sinclair, books on the subject often reveal more about the author than anything else. In Charlton's case it is clear that he regards the machine and its programming as ends in themselves.
His next most enjoyable use for the Sinclair is writing about it and, presumably, talking about it. His chapter on uses devotes as much space to the topic of writing articles and books as it does to all the others combined.
That chapter also reveals the dangers of listing magazines as it does not includes Sinclair User.
Charlton is one of the idiosyncratic writers on the Sinclair. Following his guide gives you the feeling that you are following his own experiences with the machine but with the mistakes and blind alleys taken out and the addition of occasional warnings about potential disasters included at the appropriate time.
He assumes that the first thing that you want to do is to have your hands on the keyboard and make the machine do something, preferably a game. The first lines of code appear after only seven lines of text.
From there it is a rapid gallop, with Charlton bringing in the standard commands, explaining them and allowing the reader to try them. On the whole, this approach should be encouraged. Programming can be a hard slog but it should be fun and rewarding as well.
Charlton says that he assumes no knowledge on the part of the reader but he is really addressing himself to the person who feels confident at hooking-up the machine and who has read at least the first few pages of the Sinclair manual.
It is unlikely that the totally inexperienced person, who after all has probably bought the Sinclair to find out what computers are about, could otherwise make much sense of the instruction on the first page of 'Run this and return to the book'.
That small quibble apart, I found the Gateway Guide interesting and worthwhile. Charlton goes a long way to sharing his own delight in the Sinclair with his reader.
In particular, his light hand with the problems of self-discipline in programming makes the necessary point that it is easier to do things correctly the first time. Always a gentleman, Charlton gives credit to the book which introduced him to the ideas he is putting forth.
In The Explorers Guide to the ZX-81, Mike Lord follows the same approach but assumes that the reader has read the Sinclair manual.
From then Lord acts as a guide through possibly hostile territory, pointing out the snakes of programming and the ladders for the novice. He also believes in the use of games to learn the wrinkles of programming the Sinclair, or as he puts it, "the mysteries of this marvellous machine".
Lord goes beyond the Sinclair in giving a guide to other forms of Basic programming, plus an introduction to the Matterhorn of programming: using machine code. In his light-hearted way he makes it seem the easy and natural thing to do.
Using machine code however, is easy only to a minority of people. At the same time it is not as difficult as some people regard it.
It is possible to go through life without deviating from Basic and getting just as much satisfaction from the Sinclair but for anyone who really wants to get to know their machine, a certain familiarity with machine code is necessary and Lord provides enough information and examples to provide it.
With a section for the person whose hands itch for the soldering iron, Lord's book lives up fully to its name. It is a valuable book.
For those who want to squeeze the last bit from their Sinclair, machine code programming is essential. One of the best books from which to learn it is Toni Baker's Mastering Machine Code on Your ZX-81.
In very small print the cover has 'or ZX-80'. Suspicious buyers might think that any reference to the first Sinclair was included as an afterthought but this would do Baker a disservice for all through the book she makes a clear distinction between codes for the different machines and ROMs.
Basically the book is what it claims to be - a manual which will take the person who is familiar with Basic but not with machine code to the point of making real use of the latter.