%U JIFFIES",TIME) RETURN Reception Brian Moriarty, in a February 1984 review for ANALOG Computing, concluded that Action! was "one of the most valuable development tools ever published for the Atari." He cited the manual as the only weak point of the package, claiming it "suffers from lack of confidence, uncertain organization and a shortage of good, hard technical data." Leo Laporte reviewed Action in the May/June 1984 edition of Hi-Res. He began the review, "This is the best thing to happen to Atari since Nolan Bushnell figured out people would play ping-pong on a TV screen." Laporte praised the editor, noting its split-screen and cut and paste capabilities and describing it as a "complete word processing system that's very responsive." He said that Action! ran about 200 times as fast as Atari BASIC, concluding that "This language is like a finely tuned racing car." BYTE in 1985 praised the compilation and execution speed of software written in Action! Using their Byte Sieve benchmark as a test, ten iterations of the sieve completed in 18 seconds in Action!, compared to 10 seconds for assembly and 38 minutes in BASIC. The magazine also lauded the language's editor. BYTE reported that the language resembled C closely enough to "routinely convert programs between the two", and approved of its pointer support. The magazine concluded that "Action! is easy to use, quick, and efficient. It can exploit the Atari's full power. Action! puts programming for the Atari in a whole new dimension." Ian Chadwick wrote in Mapping the Atari that "Action! is probably the best language yet for the Atari; it's a bit like C and Pascal, with a dash of Forth. I recommend it." See also PaperClip, Atari 8-bit word processor from a different author and company, based on the Action! editor References Citations Bibliography External links Action! Programming Language Version 3.6 - Source Code, by Optimized Systems Software at archive.org Action! info at Retrobits.com The ACTION! Archive Action! language reference Effectus cross-compiler Atari 8-bit family software ALGOL 68 dialect Optimized Systems Software Procedural programming languages Programming languages created in 1983 Statically typed programming languages Free and open-source software Formerly proprietary software Systems programming languages