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Many of the programs themselves were amazing (in the sense that I was amazed). Although programming techniques are very much a matter of opinion, and I am the first to admit that I am not a very clever programmer, some of the programs were mind boggling for their tedium and longwindedness. In many instances a pointer (HL) was set to a screen location, the C register loaded with the character to be displayed, a LD (HL), C instruction performed, HL was then incremented by one and the operation repeated for each character of the string. Occasionally spurious NOPs would be thrown in for good measure. This produces an overhead of at least 3 bytes per character displayed. I wonder if Mr. Hopton has forgotten that the Z80 has an LDIR instruction which only produces a total overhead of 11 bytes regardless of the length of the string. Or as the routine PRS was included in the appendix, why was this not used as the total overhead would then be only two bytes. A couple of programs are given to display geometric figures, which work by setting HL to each location in turn, then using what seems to be the author’s favourite instuction, LD (HL), C, placing an asterisc at the location pointed to by HL. No attempt is made to calculate the HL locations within a loop. Whilst this style of programming cannot be condemned as bad programming, programming being such a matter of opinon, it is at least inelegant and inefficient.

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about the whole book is the total omission of instruction mnemonics and labelled routines within Nasbug, which time and again had me thumbing through the pages of my Z80 reference book to disassemble instruction codes that were un-familiar, or the Nasbug references for whose labels and purpose I knew, but whose absolute address I could not remember. The commenting throughout was good, but without the mnemonics and labels, it was very difficult to follow which register was doing what, particularly as jumps were consistently refered to as just ‘jump’, regardless of whether it was a jump relative, jump absolute, conditional or not.

To summarise, the book is an attempt to fill the gaping void between the absolute beginner at programming and the programmer who ‘has got it all together’. A brave try, as no-one else has attempted it. Unfortuantely, the book falls between the two stools, in that indequate information is provided for the rank beginner, and the programming techniques used are liable to provoke mirth rather than serious reflection on the part of the experienced. The commenting is very thorough, but the absence of instruction mnemonics and labels makes following the programs (by single stepping) almost impossible. It is difficult to know who to recommend this book to, as it would be of little use to the beginner; hard going and poor programming practice to those with a little experience; and rib tickling to those who know what it’s all about anyway. The only saving grace is perhaps the very detailed explanations of those monitor routines listed in the appendix. In conjunction with the listings given in the Nascom manuals (to pencil in the missing mnemonics), it becomes a relatively simple piece of logical thought to see what the monitor is up to. I only wish that the monitor listings given with the Nascom were commented in this fashion in the first place.

I note that the book has “Approved by Nascom” plastered all over it, it makes me wonder who approved it, and exactly what purpose he approved it for.