¢THE ATARI 8-BIT BOOKSHELF¢¢¢ITTY BITTY BYTES OF SPACE¢¢Reviewed by Kevin Cooke¢¢¢ This is one of my favourite programming books. I bought it four or five years ago (from Silica Shop If I remember rightly) and at first was a little disappointed with it. Although I was only twelve years old, the book looked as if it was aimed at children much younger. Still, the only programming commands I understood were PRINT, GOTO and REM, so I knew I should at least learn something.¢¢ ITTY BITTY BYTES OF SPACE is written by someone that seems to have had an awful lot of experience with children. Each BASIC program is fairly short and is based on the theme of space. There is a strange urge to type in each and every program just to see it in action. Some examples of the programs in the book are a space quiz, a game of "Guess the fuel", a program that makes your joystick play sounds, and a program that will tell you your weight on any planet.¢¢ Each program has an explanation of what each line does, and it is very simple to modify them for your own purposes.¢¢ One invaluable part of the book is the appendix at the back. In this is a list of some abbreviations that can be used in programming, a picture of the control graphics keyboard, grids showing the make-up of six screen modes (these are very useful for designing screen layouts), a SETCOLOR chart, a list of numbers assigned to musical notes and a detailed explanation of the LIST "C:" and ENTER "C:" commands. The whole book runs to 55 pages.¢¢ Overall, ITTY BITTY BYTES OF SPACE is an excellent book. It seems much too basic at first, until you start discovering things you didn't know. The book now seems impossible to find (do I own the only copy?) but I would recommend you pay anything up to about 7.00 pounds for it if you are interested in learning to program in BASIC.¢¢¢NOTE: There are supposed to be other books in the series - SCHOOL DAYS and MITILDA THE COMPUTER CAT, but I've never seen them (if they were ever published I'm certain they would have been of the same high standard). If you have a copy of the above books for sale, contact me at:¢¢36 BUDDLE LANE, ST THOMAS, EXETER, DEVON, EX4 1JH, ENGLAND.¢¢If you don't wish to sell your copy but still have one, contact me just to let me know not to give up my search for them! All letters will be gratefully recieved.¢
