Electronics 1989
Microsoft
To learn Microsoft QuickBASIC, you only need a manual this thick.
FROM THE PRINTED PAGEOriginal ad copy
OCR transcription from the archived page. Scanning and reading-order errors may remain.
To learn Microsoft QuickBASIC, you only need a manual this thick. You're looking at something you won't see anywhere else. It's called QB Advisor. A remarkable new hypertext electronic manual that can make you instantly more productive, even if you don't know the first thing about programming. QB Advisor actually lets you experiment by cutting and pasting useful sample programs right into your programming window. Only Microsoft has it. Only Microsoft could. And it's just one of the things you'll learn about new Microsoft® QuickBASIC version 4.5 for IBM® PCs and compatibles. Another is the step-by-step tutorial that actually takes you through every stage of programming by working you through a complete program. And QB Express—the interactive way to learn all about your programming environment in a matter of minutes—not hours. Microsoft QuickBASIC also comes with Easy Menus that let you develop programs with a minimum number of menu choices. Context-sensitive Help for immediate help with error messages and variables by simply punching a key, or clicking a mouse. And a built-in debugger that lets you see exactly what your program is doing, as it's doing it. Best of all, Microsoft QuickBASIC is packed with enough power to handle whatever problems drove you to programming in the first place. Fact is, it translates your program into executable code at an incredible 150,000 lines per minute. Microsoft QuickBASIC version 4.5. If programming is the only way out, this is the easiest way in. Microsoft QuickBASIC Microsoft® Making it all make sense.® [illegible small text on disk label and product packaging]
Commentary
I expected a book after reading the headline. Instead, Microsoft lays a floppy disk almost flat across the page, turning the familiar gesture of measuring a manual’s thickness into a sight gag. The type is enormous; the object that supposedly contains the explanation is remarkably thin. The disparity gives the beginner a moment of relief before the body copy introduces a single feature.
Then I followed the account of QB Advisor. Its promise is more specific than a smaller book: sample programs can be copied into the programming window, help responds to context, and the debugger shows what code is doing while it runs. The ad makes learning and making adjacent activities. A complete-program tutorial supplies a route through the unknown; reduced menus promise fewer opportunities to take a wrong turn. Compilation speed arrives late, after Microsoft has addressed the difficulty of beginning.
There is a revealing tension in the word “manual.” The joke works because substantial instructions are expected to occupy substantial paper. An electronic reference moves that bulk onto a disk, but the important change is access: an example can become working material without being retyped. Today’s searchable documentation and integrated assistance make that proximity familiar. This page catches a moment when the relationship between reading instructions and editing code was itself a feature worth explaining.
For a new copywriter, “this thick” is language that requires its picture. Without the disk it is incomplete; with the disk it becomes the proposition. “Only Microsoft has it. Only Microsoft could” repeats a structure while escalating from possession to capability. The closing pair, “only way out” and “easiest way in,” returns to the beginner’s problem. Make the verbal reversal answer a real anxiety, rather than exist as an isolated clever line.
Microsoft’s history begins with BASIC for the Altair in 1975. Its development-tools timeline records QuickBASIC 4.5 in 1988; the supplied scan identifies this advertisement as 1989. Microsoft continues to offer Visual Studio development tools.
Reducing the distance between a learner’s question and a working program remains a persuasive promise. The floppy disk and IBM-compatible specification belong to this sale. The more lasting idea is that documentation should help someone act, not merely demonstrate how much there is to know.