So you want to write something for the Spectrum. Let's face it, it's probably a game.

Back in the day most people started with Sinclair Basic on the Spectrum. It's quite user friendly, many people at that time were using versions of Basic on other computers, maybe at school. But Basic is slow and limited. Some progressed to writing Assembly (also known as machine code), or some used Basic compilers to speed up their Basic, still limited, but easy to write and way faster. Assembly has a steeper learning curve, needed additional software, had the potential to crash and force you to start again, and needed an organised approach. On the other hand - it's waaaay faster and unlocks everything the Spectrum can do.
 (Yes I know there were further options Pascal, Forth, but they were quite niche)

These days you have the internet to see examples, tutorials, copy code, emulators and cross assemblers. Editors let you cut and paste, or search and replace. It's so easy these days quite frankly I'm disappointed you haven't written a game while you've been reading this. So let's have a look at modern options to create a game, in the table below we'll try to take you through some of the best options for developing on the Spectrum.

Name	Comments	Speed 1	Pros	Cons
Sinclair Basic	The Spectrum's built in language. Just power up your Spectrum (or start your emulator) and the cursor is waiting for you to enter some Basic commands. But the editor, operating system and Basic were all crammed into 16k, it was somewhat fiddly, there's no cut and paste or other fancy tricks. And if  you're using a PC keyboard, either enter BASIC in 128K mode or you'll need to remember where all those keywords were on the keyboard. Alternatively BasinC is a great Spectrum flavoured editor / emulator / debugger that makes developing BASIC for the Spectrum much easier. It also includes tools for creating graphics and an assembler debugger for machine code, making it a decent option for progressing. For Mac/ IPad users there is Classic Coder And you can cheat to speed it up, either by using one of the original compilers, or just running your emulator at top speed	10%	Familiar Quite easy Many existing listings to adapt and improve	Slow Limited
Boriel ZX BASIC	Fairly similar to Sinclair Basic, confusingly even called ZX BASIC, but it compiles your basic to machine code, plus it has support for sprites and other extras. To quote from their site "ZX BASIC syntax tries to maintain compatibility as much as possible with Sinclair BASIC, it also have many new features, mostly taken from FreeBASIC dialect."	50%	Still easy Faster than Basic Extra features such as sprites Good forum with examples Supports assembly code too	Not as fast as assembly
SpecBas	Ok this is a red herring. It's based on Sinclair BASIC but with lots of extras and the result runs on your PC, not on a Spectrum or emulator	6000%  2	Familiar Basic Very powerful and fast	It's not actually running on a Spectrum
Z80 Assembly Code	Assembler is the language understood by the machine - so assembly can get the maximum performance from your Spectrum, but if you're not wired like a CPU it's the most difficult for beginners. Most commercial games were created in assembly. Many tools to choose from ... more info here	100%	Very Fast Plenty of example source Many good tools	Steep learning curve
C	Z88DK is a developer kit to compile C on many platforms, including the Spectrum. I know very little about it (or C) but it does include Sprite support, seems to be well documented with example code and forums to discuss how to use it.	50%	Handy if you know C Fast
	A game designing system with built in sprite, map and tile editors, in principle it makes the code for you. Originally the designer was written to also run on the Spectrum, but in 2019 AGDx was created, a PC* based game editor for the Spectrum and many other retro platforms. There were other arcade game designers back in the day, but they are probably best left there.	100%	The easiest option to develop games	Limited flexibility Lacks the challenge of programming
RAGE 1	Retro Adventure Game Editor - Built using Z88DK and SP1 sprite library, this
Adventure games	Adventure games are well suited to creation tools. Originally on the Spectrum there was the Quill from Gilsoft, which later evolved to Professional Adventure Writer.There was also Graphical Adventure Creator by Incentive. Now there are PC or browser based tools to design adventures that can export to these systems to run on a Spectrum. Examine tools	N/A	Seems most tools are pretty easy, little programming skill needed

1 Depending on your code
2 Depending on your PC