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The utility programs also rangefrom very good to poor. Several ofthem. such as the Personal Bankingprogram and the assembly languagePlot program, are fantastic. However,others are not very useful, such as theVideo Tape Finder and the AirlineGuide. The three or four educational ., programs in this book are good programs,but not very innovative in theirapproach to teaching concepts.Finally. the two music programsincluded, Sprite Dance and Rainbow,are exceptional. The programs, while not free fromerrors, are, on the whole, well written.The programs that are poor in thisbook tend to be poor not from bad programming,but more from the badideas that they are base_d based on. One programwhich illustrates this well is TenUpTen-Up.The program/ itself is logicallyarranged and is a good example ofstructured programming techniques,but the actual game itself is not in theleast interesting and can even be describedas boring. Poor programmingmore often results from poor ideas:conversely, an excellent idea for aprogram will not make a programexcellent unless the programmingtechniques used are excellent. Usuallythe programming concepts that arepresented in even the poorest ones arealone worth the cost of.the book. ==Ease of Use: == The book is written in aprogra mmer-to-programmer styleand is easy to read. Anyone who cantype in a program with a moderateamount of success will find that thebook is extremely easy to use. ==Documentation; == The writer is veryconscious of who the book is writtenfor. The book gives detailed instructionson how to type in a program inlhein the introduction, thereby sparing themore advanced user from having toread it every time in the programexplanation. The explanation givenprior to each program listing usuallydoes not describe the listing, butintead instead gives the program's function,possible uses, possible enhancementsand sometimes descriptions of importantprogramming concepts. All of theprograms may be typed in directly outof the book, and in all the listings thelevgth length of the lines is less than the maximumallowable length. The book waswell edited and typographical errorsare very rare. The only problem I seelies in the area of program aesthetics,the graphics and screen output beingusually rather bland and average. ==Value: == The book is a great value inthe fact it is actually two products: agood collection of programs and agreat resource of programming techniques.Since programs are includedfrom six different authors, the bookhas a myriad of program styles, any ofwhich is worthy of emulation. However,the book really is a value in thefact that there are more programs andless book. That is to say, a majority ofthe space in the book is occupied byprogram listings, and very little occupiedby the author's thoughts on worldpolitics and their relation to programmingin BASIC.