So You Want to Become a Programmer

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Revision as of 00:18, 11 May 2006 (view source) Wtd (Talk | contribs) (→First Steps: Know Your Environment) ← Older edit		Latest revision as of 16:26, 11 May 2006 (view source) Wtd (Talk | contribs) (→A Little Bit of Theory)
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	*** Cygwin		*** Cygwin
	* Filesystem hierarchy		* Filesystem hierarchy
		+
		+	== A Little Bit of Theory ==
		+
		+	* Source code as simply text
		+	* Compilers/interpreters taking that and turning it into a format a machine can understand
		+	* Statements vs. Expressions
		+	** Removes bad "magic" from programming
		+	** <pre>(+ (- 5 1) (/ 6 2))</pre> does not require special syntactic support, as opposed to <pre>(+ 4 3)</pre>
		+	* Entry points (what order things are executed in)
		+	** Sometimes the program is just executed in order, and sometimes the entry point is specially delineated

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Latest revision as of 16:26, 11 May 2006

First Steps: Know Your Environment

• ASCII
• File extensions
• Command-line
  • Commonalities between *nix and Windows shells
    • Spaces to separate arguments
    • PATH
  • Differences
    • Less need to modify PATH on *nix (/usr/bin and /usr/local/bin)
    • Running executables in current directory
  • Bridging the gap
    • Cygwin
• Filesystem hierarchy

A Little Bit of Theory

• Source code as simply text
• Compilers/interpreters taking that and turning it into a format a machine can understand
• Statements vs. Expressions
  • Removes bad "magic" from programming

  • (+ (- 5 1) (/ 6 2))

    does not require special syntactic support, as opposed to

    (+ 4 3)

• Entry points (what order things are executed in)
  • Sometimes the program is just executed in order, and sometimes the entry point is specially delineated