Programming in BASIC
BASIC is the language your ACE speaks the moment it finishes booting. There is nothing to install and nothing to set up. The OK on the screen is the language waiting for you.
This half of the guide teaches it from the beginning. You do not need to have programmed before. You do need an ACE switched on in front of you, or the emulator open, because every page here has something to type.
How to read this
Work through Part I in order. Each chapter is short, builds on the one before it, and ends with a program you can run.
Then keep Part II to hand. It's the half you flip to at one in the morning when you can't remember whether MID$ counts from 0 or 1 — every keyword, every error message, and an example of each.
Everything here is typed in upper case
The ACE's keyboard has no lower case, so BASIC doesn't either. Type it as it's printed and you'll be fine.
The shortest possible program
If you have not typed anything into the machine yet, start here:
PRINT 6 * 7 42
OKYou just wrote a program. It ran the moment you pressed Enter, which is the first thing the next chapter is about.
Part I — Learning it
| Chapter | What you get out of it |
|---|---|
| Typing it in | Line numbers, RUN, LIST, and editing what you wrote |
| Numbers and variables | Storing things, and what the machine can count to |
| Showing things | PRINT properly: columns, tabs, and neat output |
| Asking questions | INPUT, and what happens when the answer is nonsense |
| Making decisions | IF, THEN, ELSE, and the truth trap |
| Going around again | FOR, NEXT, STEP |
| Subroutines | GOSUB, RETURN, and menus with ON |
| Arrays | DIM, and holding a lot of numbers at once |
| Working with words | Cutting up and gluing together text |
| Lists in the program | DATA, READ, RESTORE |
| Your own functions | DEF FN |
| Sound and video | CLS, LOCATE, COLOR, SOUND, VOL |
| Sticks and keys | INKEY, JOY, PAUSE, WAIT |
| Saving your work | SAVE, LOAD, BSAVE, and the memory card |
| Time and memory that lasts | TIME, DATE, NVRAM |
| Reaching the machine | PEEK, POKE, SYS, BANK |
| When it goes wrong | STOP, CONT, and reading an error |
| Programs worth typing | Eight finished programs, including a game |
Part II — Looking it up
| Page | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Every keyword | All 85 of them, with a working example each |
| Every error message | What it means, and what to do about it |
| What BASIC does with your memory | Where programs, variables and strings live |