When I read the short article about BBC BASIC, I thought I would give it a try. After all, there hasn't been an innovative way to integrate BASIC's ease-of-use with Z80 assembly's speed. There are methods, but they're usually memory-expensive calls to assembly-language routines.

This program certainly delivered. In addition to inline assembly language (straight in the code), it also boasts all the features of traditional BASIC, including loading and saving files (as variables!), graphics options, and the like. The "keyboard" is a little confusing, but relatively easy to adapt to after a little trial-and-error.

The one gripe I have with BBC BASIC is its editor. Instead of letting you edit it directly, the editor is line-based, so you have to tell it which lines of code to list and re-type them (or copy them) to change them. If you need to insert ten lines of code between line 16 and line 17 -- good luck, you'll need it.

BBC BASIC is an interesting and powerful implementation of BASIC, *real* BASIC, for the TI-83 calculator. Unfortunately, the nostalgic but unfriendly environment might put off novices. Good for an intense program, but not quick enough to make something useful during a math competition.