All around us the computer revolution is taking place. It is the most important social and cultural change since the industrial revolution 150 years ago. Some people think that this is taking mankind into a new historical age. It all began about 40 years ago with bulky, expensive monster computers that could do very little compared to modern machines. Since then the size and cost of computers has been falling faster and faster, recently because of the silicon chip which is at the heart of today's computers. The VIC 20 is a real computer which is capable of all the tasks that bigger, more expensive machines used to do. It is one of the very first real computers that most households can afford. Very soon the ability to use and program a computer is going to be a basic skill as important as reading and writing. If you have a VIC 20, you're a kind of pioneer; you and your family have a great educational opportunity.

It would be a great pity to miss out on this. It is all too easy to buy a VIC, play with it for a while using a few programs or games that someone else has written, and then let the whole thing be discarded like some forgotten toy. VIC is not a toy, it is a real computer. Since computer skills are already in great demand, you owe it to yourself to make the most of it. This book is intended to help unleash the computer experts hiding inside real people, by helping them learn to program a real computer (VIC) using a real programming language (BASIC).