Learning sources

[steveo]

Jon,
I've been taking the time to go through the wealth of material found in the "help" section of the Stamp editor. Much of it seems to start just a a tad higher than my knowledge level, but covers the material just a hair short of what I need to really grasp it.

Don't get me wrong, it's helping me a lot but it tends to lead to more questions, like "what's the functional difference between on-gosub and branch?"

Can you recommend some further reading sources for me?

[JonnyMac]

Parallax has a ton of material on the BS2 (which we use in the Prop-2).  I would recommend StampWorks, but then... I wrote it!  Ego aside, it will teach you professional coding techniques as they apply to the BS2.

Sadly, there's not much info on the BS1; still there's is something:
  -- Nuts & Volts "Stamp Applications"
  -- BS1 App Notes

Note: The authors of these sources don't alwys conform to "The Elements of PBASIC Style" (in the help file).  I suggest that you should, even if they don't.

Since we all learn through observation I suggest you read through these sources.  Even if the project seems very far from what you'd ever do, read the material, anyway.  Programming is programming, and a microcontroller doesn't care if it's running a thermostat or a pop-up monster in a haunted house.

To your question: BRANCH is a [specialized] form of GOTO that gets it's target from a list.  What target from the list?  Well, BRANCH requires an index for that.  It's a great piece of work and I've always loved BRANCH.  It is especially useful in state-driven programs (the state causes the program to branch appropriately).

ON-GOTO and BRANCH are identical; they function alike.  I asked for ON-GOTO and ON-GOSUB at Parallax to conform to other versions of BASIC.  Now... ON-GOSUB is a different beast.  Whenever you have a GOSUB the program is going to jump to another section and expects to find a RETURN somewhere.  When it hits that RETURN the program jumps back to the line after GOSUB.  Using subroutines is a clean way to re-use code and have it called from any point within the program, as once the subroutine is finished it automatically makes its way back to the point that called it.

I hope this helps.