N E W S   a n d   V I E W S

19th October 2005

After quite a few months of holiday I'm back!

Richard Russell had written to me way back in October 2004 as follows (edited):

Richard,

I have been contacted by a person who tried to use your BBC
BASIC online tutorial and got stuck very early on.  Reading
your pages I think I think I can see why:

Tutorial 1 is about 'immediate mode' and explains in detail
how to type commands into the 'output' window for immediate
execution.

Tutorial 2 is about writing programs and launches straight
into typing in program statements.  However it never says
you need to type them into a different window!  The person
who contacted me had been typing the program into the output
window, just as Tutorial 001 had instructed!

I think there needs to be some introduction to Tutorial 002,
similar to the detail in Tutorial 001, explaining the use
of the editing window and the working of the Run button.

If you can find the time to do it, I think your tutorial
would be significantly improved by such an addition.

Regards,

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/

to which I only recently replied (edited):

Richard

So sorry it has taken me so long to reply to this, but I have now modified
Tutorial 2 as you suggested.

 Only now have I had the opportunity to attend to the Website. I have today discovered NVU (webpage composer/editor/publisher) ) and
used it instead of the Netscape Composer , which I was using embedded in the
dreaded Netscape 7 (with all its popups).

Best wishes

Richard

and the (prompt!) reply:

Richard,

>So sorry it has taken me so long to reply to this, but I have now modified
>Tutorial 2 as you suggested.

Thanks very much.  I had given up hope of ever hearing from you
again, and feared the worst! 

Do you now expect to be able to spend a bit more time on BBC
BASIC matters?  If so, can I encourage you to join the Yahoo!
discussion group (if you haven't already) where I'm quite
certain your expertise would be much valued.  Only recently
there was a thread discussing the need for a really good
beginners' tutorial for BBC BASIC for Windows (not that yours
isn't good, of course, but I'm sure you'd be the first to agree
that it would need some more work to make it comprehensive).

If you do feel able to spend the time, I look forward to
'seeing' you there:

 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bbcbasic

Regards and Best Wishes,

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/

I shall try to make some time for this!
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