Book Review - Applesoft BASIC Subroutines & Secrets - Jeanette and Dave Sullivan

Hello again,

Well, its review time and I wanted to talk about one of the programming books I've been reading.  The book is "Applesoft BASIC Subroutines & Secrets" by Jeanette and Dave Sullivan. This is one rather remarkable programming book.  Published in 1987 and coming in at a beefy 305 pages, this book is packed with great programming information and tips.  Jeanette and Dave have crammed everything but the kitchen sink in this book.  Page after page is one code example after another, giving credence to the phrase, "when is enough really enough!"  I love the way they setup each programming example with a clear, bold catch-phrase title that tells what the programming example is about.  Then right below the title is a one-line tip phase that explains exactly what the program does.  Each example has an “Explanation” paragraph with a detail discussion of how the program works and what certain line do in the program.  Each program is accompanied with the example code in easy to read numbered lines statements.  Each program includes REM statements for further code breakdown.  Some programming examples even include a “Modification” paragraph for ways to enhance the program or tweak it for different results.
I tested a large majority of the programs and didn’t find any errors, which is truly remarkable because editing in programming books was atrocious in the 80’s.  You wouldn’t believe how many times I would enter a program example and when you type RUN, you get hit with an error.  Well how crappy is that when you are just learning and now you are the one trying to figure out what doesn’t work in a program you just typed in!  So, believe me when I say it’s nice to have code that works.

Topics covered in the book are as follows:

            Program entry and disk access
            Data entry and error trapping
            Output format
            Special Effects
            Sorting, Searching, and Scrambling
            Low Resolution Graphics
            High Resolution Graphics
            Circles, Sines, Cosines, and Designs
            Slide Show
            Bells, Clicks, Sounds, and Tunes

Depending on what you are interested in, you should find anything and everything your heart desires in this book.  I especially like the sections on Graphics, where the programs were creative and informative.  Actually the Low and High Graphics sections had the most information and took up most of the bulk of the book.

The book includes a number of example outputs from programs which are mostly geared to the graphics programming section.  A number of “Sample Output” is shown in the Data Entry section, which shows examples of column and text formats.  To see most of the examples you must enter the code and test the program yourself. 

There are a small number of illustrations in the book to give you that 80’s feel but not really enough to talk about.

There is a great section on Bit Mapping that does a good job of explaining how to create shapes or character examples in a 7x8 bit format.  Another cool group of examples cover Special Effects with Machine Language Routines!  This section gave me the most fun because it really delved into Machine Language coding using the all purpose PEEK, POKE, and CALL statements.  Some of the examples included screen wrapping, shifting, flipping, and scrolling, which is similar to how the movement in the Ulima world maps functions.  Be prepared to enter a large number of data statements when covering this section!

Each chapter gives a cute little illustration and a nice synopsis of what the section will cover and what is to be expected.

The last section of the book covers the appendix, which has some extremely valuable information regarding ASCII codes, Apple Memory Map, Color Charts, PEEK, POKE, CALL commands, and summary of commands to Save Graphics or Text.

All in all this is a great programming book for the Apple II and IIe covering Applesoft Basic and Machine Language coding.  This book does what it set out to do, give clear, concise programming example without the fluff and storytelling.  I highly recommend this book if you are looking for good, real world programming examples for your Applesoft basic programs.

Price    - $19.95

Rating is on a 1 to 10 scale with 10 being the highest.

Depth - 8
Programming – 9
Sample codes - 6
Quality – 8
Bulk - 8
Information – 9
Humor – 4
Overall rating – 7.5

Detailed rating description:

Depth – This represents the depth and detail of the information given in the book.
Programming – This represents the programming code examples given and how useful and usable they are to the reader.
Sample code – This represents the amount of sample output given from each program in the book.
Quality – This represents the quality and craftsmanship of the book.

Bulk – This represents the amount of pages within the book.

Information – This represents the quality of the information given in the book such as, the code examples, the explanation of program examples, the description of what to expect, code modifications and tweaks, and the overall detail of the contents of the book.

Humor – This represents the cartoons, illustrations, or funny anecdotes given within the text or storyline of the book.  This may or may not be a factor to most readers!