Resources supplied
This work consists of explaining a principle and giving examples of its use followed by practice at
using it and gaining confidence by solving small problems (different levels of difficulty).
Answers to everything are supplied AND explained.
A wealth of material is supplied to make things more interesting (and to save you having to do too much typing). The following is included:-
BBC Basic. 119 pages as a Word ™ document.
This book is cross referenced to “Learning Basic” by signs such as ReadData.
Hold down the Ctrl key, point the mouse at ReadData and left click to be transferred to an explanatory page in “Learning Basic”.
To return to the BBC Basic book use the link in “Learning Basic” (RD in this case).
In this manner you can travel between problems and explanations at will.
There are 129 problems in this book alone and they cover many different aspects of programming.
Some of them are just small bits of programs and others are parts of larger programs
as in “Overhead crane simulation”, “negotiating a maze” and “Text analysis” to name just three.
Learning Basic. 36 pages which help with the keywords used in programming (READ, DATA etc)
Think like a programmer. 170 pages explaining the problems set in the BBC Basic book.
For example FingersToes (Segment) (tlap p3) is a problem in BBC Basic and (tlap p3) means it is explained on page 3 of Think like a programmer.
This book also develops the more complicated programs (Lift, Crane, Morse Code to name just three) from first principles using many small steps
and then putting them all together.
This also gives the opportunity for meeting many different problems on the way (from simple to more demanding).
Debugging. 35 pages explaining debugging and including 21 programs with bugs for you to find.
Calculator. 50 pages that develop the calculator program from scratch.
A lot of interesting work here…including the use of a transparent brush to highlight text in order to delete it or alter it.
The edit facilities allow for deletion or overwriting of the selected text and insertion of new text in front of the selected position.
Address Labels. 20 pages which develop a program to print labels on sticky label sheets with 18 labels (6 rows of 3).
The start label can be selected by radio buttons so that part used sheets of labels can be used.
More Labels. 15 pages which extends the label program so that it can print on sheets of 21 labels (7 rows of 3) and also on 14 labels (7 rows of 2).
Templates are provided to facilitate the implementation.
LEDs8. 37 pages that develops a program that can be programmed!
It will accept commands to operate a set of 8 lights on screen and then exute the commands sequentially when told to.
The program can be slowed down or speeded up AS it is running and can be set to auto repeat.
It can also be single stepped (run one instruction at a time) to aid debugging.
Morse Code. 18 pages that develop a program to send (or receive) Morse code for practice purposes at a speed selected by the user.
You may receive a chosen part of the alphabet, the whole alphabet, numbers or a random selection from a list of 300 phrases.
Music. 131 pages to develop the music program.
There is an enormous amount of work here.
Drawing the music screen with three staves and all the musical symbols.
Scrolling the screen. Entering notes. Saving the notes. Setting the Tempo. Setting the envelope.
Synchronising the notes so that cords are played in the right sequence.
Resistors. 2 pages that explain how to use the program
Introduction. Supplied as a three page document explaining how to use this package.
Big Sums. 4 pages involving the program Bigsums to get answers to some very large results.
BioRhythms. 2 pages explaining the theory behind Bio Rhythms.
GraphPlot Manual. 10 pages explaining how to use the program GraphPlot.
The Mayan Calendar. 1 page explaining the ancient Mayan calendar.
That’s a total of 650 pages of instructive material.
Plus the following is supplied:-
13 .ico files (for moving shapes around the screen)
94 .bmp picture files for use in various programs
59 program segments for you to work on (saves having to type them in)
22 prepared data files for stock lists, addresses, coded messages, data files to merge,
data files for operating a crane simulation and a paper tape reader simulation.