The book itself appears to be decently written, and progresses in an orderly fashion. The problem I had was with the software. I installed BlitzMax from the disk. It stated it had a 30-day trial period. I opened the first program, changed the player's speed and pressed save, but the software wouldn't allow the program to save and stated that the trial period had ended. I guess they meant a 30-second trial period. No hope reopening BlitzMax with the expired trial period.

I then tried to use Blitz Plus, but this has a slightly different coding standard and wouldn't run the programs on the disk. Not that it mattered, as soon as I tried to save anything it also immediately terminated the trial period.

What I did see during the few minutes I managed to actually see BlitzMax is a half-baked development environment that probably isn't worth the price for the full-up version. Of course, given the quality issues I experienced with their trial version, purchasing a permanent license is clearly out of the question.

I would suggest, as others have posted, that teens looking to learn programming download Microsoft Visual Basic Express for free. It isn't a hybrid Basic/C language, but a real language that is actually used in industry. It can perform all the same functions as those discussed in this book, is pretty easy to learn, and has a much more refined development environment that actually works.