Advanced Programming Techniques

Abstract

To give your programs that really professional quality it is essential to make them user friendly. This is one of the few pieces of advertising jargon that actually bears any relation to reality: it is essential to make programs easy to use, not just for yourself but for other people. We have all returned to programs written in a hurry three months previously, only to find that they are so badly structured/commented that we cannot understand them. It is good programming practice to comment all but the most trivial programs, as well as to make their output self-explanatory. REMarks do take up a great deal of space in the memory, but you must distinguish between a listing for general distribution and heavily used working programs. If you take a sensible approach at the beginning, and plan your programs, you can save a great deal of time and effort later on. For example, our placing of all BASIC statements on lines ending in 0 and REMs on lines ending in 9 makes the REM stripper (AUT09, 10) a simple way to turn a readable program into a memory-wise efficient one. You can also use ‘derem’. Do not take the need to save store to ludicrous extremes; space out statements and never place too many BASIC statements on any one line — this makes programs incomprehensible. Ensure that the prompts displayed while you are actually RUNning the program are clear and concise. Another simple way of providing help is to include an introductory instruction routine, as found on many video games.