Barnes and Noble Books

This site aims : to make it easy for beginners (and others) to program their PCs using Richard Russell's "BBC Basic for Windows" program. A very capable free version of BB4W can be downloaded from his website (see above) in only four minutes and the vast majority of programs which you can download from this site will run on the free version.

For larger programs you can buy (for 29.99GBP) the full version of BB4W which is also capable of producing executable programs which will run on any PC without the owner needing to have a copy of BB4W himself/herself.

You will thus be able to actively program your PC rather than just be a passive user of others' software. BBC Basic has been in use for two decades so it is well tried and tested.

The BBC BASIC programming language was designed in the early eighties to be used in schools and colleges and it was used extensively in the UK. It is a fully structured Basic with definable Procedures and Functions. The BBC Model B computer was in use in thousands of British schools, colleges and universities during the eighties. The later Archimedes and A3000 and A5000 machines held their own in many British schools for a while but gradually PCs have all but ousted them. At the same time programming in schools has become a very rare activity.

Huge amounts of BBC Basic software were written for the BBC (and some other) machines and much of this is potentially available for use and further development using BB4W. The modern PC runs so many times faster than the original BBC Model B that programs such as my Stardance (downloadable from this site), which models the movements of stars in a cluster, now goes at a cracking speed with many more stars.

Richard Russell's amazingly compact program (version 1) (here abbreviated to "BB4W") fits on just one floppy disc. It has a programming interface which is a joy to use. There is a beautifully produced help file just one click away from the interface. Numerous additional programming features have been added to the BBC Basic as it was available on the BBC and Archimedes machines. Version 2 is now available as a free online update to owners of Version 1.

This site aims to provide you with the means to learn the BBC Basic language for almost no financial cost. BBC Basic is designed to show the power of programming when the user may know only a handful of commands. You will be able to use your imagination and be inventive straight away.

On this site I give you some of the programs that I have written over twenty years which I hope will demonstrate the economy and versatility of BBC Basic. A BBC Basic program may only be a few lines long and yet produce strikingly useful, beautiful or amusing results.

The Tutorial Section is now coming along quite well so if you work through it and email me if/when when you get stuck that should keep you on track and give me valuable feedback to enable me to make improvements.

I hope you will enjoy learning to program.

To continue click here

Please feel welcome to contact me at richardweston@onetel.com