An Introduction to BASIC Programming for Microcomputers

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

This is a stand-alone introduction to the BASIC programming language; it teaches you to write programs. The input of data and the output of information are dealt with first, followed by the arithmetic operations. The material applies to Apple, IBM, Commodore and Radio Shack personal computers. But only the most common features of BASIC are here and, as the authors note, by restricting oneself to these simple statements one will achieve “portability” and compatibility of programs that can be transferred to other computers. This is an important point that many other programming books often overlook.

There are lots of illustrations and applications given, and all examples are reproduced in “dot matrix” typeface, to simulate real printouts (although the dot machines are declining in sales as the prices of daisy wheel machines fall).