Anyone can play games on a microcomputer. More difficult - and much more fun - is writing programs to construct your own games. Programming a computer is frustrating, fascinating and immensely satisfying - when it works.

ME AND MY MICRO tells you how to start writing programs. After a brief introduction, the book uses games to show you how to build up programs. You will find out how to use loops, how to print things on screen, move them about and control their movement from the keyboard. You will learn how to handle strings and shuffle them, to make anagrams, throw dice and solve crosswords.

More important, the book will show you how to think in the right way to develop the structure to programs. Follow the ideas in thie book, and your programs will become efficient, easy to read and easy to debug, unlike those 'spaghetti programs' we all know and hate.

The book is not only fun to work through, but also leaves you with a set of ideas and techniques which you can then use to develop your own programs. The programs you write will be properly structured so that they not only work, but will also be easy to follow and extend.

The book is designed to accompany Yorkshire Television's ME AND MY MICRO series, and these broadcasts introduce the ideas in this book. Nevertheless, the book can be used independently. The programs in the book have been planned for the Acorn Electron, BBC Micro and the Sinclair Spectrum, but are easily adaptable for many of the other small micros currently available.

Also obtainable from your usual suppliers are software packs for the Electron and the Spectrum that provide some games like those in the broadcasts and in the book which you can play - and then take apart and improve.

The ME AND MY MICRO television series is a Yorkshire Television Production, written and presented by Fred Harris.

Graphics and Cover Design: David Gledhill