Deep Sea Checking In

Deep Sea · Post by **Deep Sea** » Tue Dec 04, 2001 6:41 am

Deep Sea Checking In

I'd like to find out when everyone's caught up. When everyone's on the same page we’re going to go forward. Here's the plan for the next few weeks:

<LI>Lecture IV will do the first program. The discussion is lengthy; lots of pictures. </LI>
<LI>Lecture V will get into customization of the IDE. It is a complex tool and you will need to move some stuff around and add a few things to it. It is also "soft" meaning that you can move its individual windows around and even get hopelessly lost without a few pointers on how to get un-stuck. This will be a lecture in damage control. </LI>
<LI>Lecture VI will return to the first program and we will beat function implementation to death. I'm thinking top-down program design right from the beginning of the course. Although the functions I present are simple to make your life easy, in modern-day programming paradigm, one focuses first on the overview and then fills in the details as appropriate. </LI>
<LI>Lecture VII will show you how to outline all the major pieces of your program and then compile it bug free.
<LI>Lecture VIII will be an introduction to built in data types and variables and what to do with them.
<LI>Lecture IX will show you how to connect those pieces together, describe the parts of the debugger that will be used to step through each and every single part of your program to tell that it is truly working.

Paradigm. Don't you love it? Without first checking the dictionary, all that word means is "the approach" or just "how you go about doing it."

So let me know either here or through email where you are and how you’re doing.

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Allen Moulton from Uechi-ryu Etcetera

Added description of additional lectures to give you visibility about where I am going and the direction I'm taking to get you there.

[This message has been edited by Deep Sea (edited December 04, 2001).]

Post by **gmattson** » Tue Dec 04, 2001 1:34 pm

Al:

Last time I checked into your course site, it was password protected. How do students get the password and URL?

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GEM

Arnie Elkins · Post by **Arnie Elkins** » Tue Dec 04, 2001 10:56 pm

Lectures 1-3 completed. No questions at this time.

Deep Sea · Post by **Deep Sea** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 12:31 am

Hi George. Send me email and I will officially register you.

As soon as we get Laird up and running in full blossom it will be time to post Lecture IV.

Everyone: when you have time, K & R read and reread Page 202, paragraphs 2 and 4 on functions in the K & R book. Read Page 24, sections 1.7 and 1.8. Read chapter 4 page 67 all and page 68 all except for the paragraph that begins with "we can..." Until we get into studying the code, reading assignments will be limited. Stay away from wherever it talks about pointers.

Laird, Please hang in there. I threatened that the beginning several lectures will be the most difficult, Always true for bonified beginners.

Don't let it give you a headache. After you get stuck for only a brief time, put it down and either publish where you are stuck here where there are more people to help you possibly at varied times during the day, or email me directly if you'd rather.

If the book that came with your package is entitled "Introduction to Visual C++ 6.0" I highly recommend for everyone not to even look at the table of contents.

If you'd like to read, There are parts of the K&R book that you can shim through. The beginning chapters are good, but don't try to memorize anything, just read, or skim, and remember as much vocabulary as you can. At this stage of the course you don't need to know more. The first two pages on Functions are good. Chapter 4, I believe. Avoid pointers, they'll drive you nuts at this time.

Stay with me Laird. You need to relate to me exactly what started to go wrong and where, and I, or we all here, can write you through it.

To get the project messed up is an easy thing to do, I'm not embarassed at all when I tell you I have done the same thing, more than once.

There's a lot in the installation process you are not meant to understand, just get through it. If you had to reinstall months later you will understand more. Learning some of this stuff is done through osmosis, and no amount of bookwork will get you there.

I'm going to be explaining pieces of the IDE as we go along, and anticipated problems using it, that's why I called Lecture VI Damage control. Part of that lecture will be engaged in going forward and the rest will be a little time-out to do some assessments.

Lecture IV is the standard first C program taught the world over. I go into excruciating detail explaining every single piece on how to set up your project and write the actual program. To get to that point and completing it is the absolute hardest of everything for a new person.

I'm outta here shortly. I brought my mom to the hospital yesterday morning after she had a difficult weekend. She's ok now. After I get back. I'll check in again.

But first, I'm going to give an example of what I am looking for in the first phase of our programming assignment.

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Allen Moulton from Uechi-ryu Etcetera

Deep Sea · Post by **Deep Sea** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 1:42 am

Laird, Lecture III is meant to make your ife easier. I will write about it more when we use it. It'll make more sense when we actually go looking for something. That's not putting you off rather after we use it a few times, re-read Lecture III and you will understand very well. Those new to this stuff often require 2 to 3 passes at things before they grasp it. That's normal and expected. You can learn this stuff a lot faster than Sanchin.

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Allen Moulton from Uechi-ryu Etcetera

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 3:52 am

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Deep Sea:

As soon as we get Laird up and running in full blossom it will be time to post Lecture IV.

Allen , please don't let me slow down the process. If I get up and running I'll down load the next lecture. I see no reason for my lack of understanding to hold back my fellow students.

I actually doubt I'm capable of catching on to this. The book may as well be written in Gaelic or an obscure Aborigine dialect for all I can glean from it.

From the preface seven computing terms that sailed right thru the space between my ears: control flow, data structures, set of operators, variables, assignment statements, loops,functions.

From the 2nd & 3rd paragraphs page 1, more meaningless jargon: BCPL, B, typeless languages, characters, intergers, floating point numbers, pointers ,arrays, structures, unions, expressions, operators, operands,machine independant address arithmetic.

I do not have the background to understand this material.

Think of a sentence where X represents a term you have never heard and where y represents a term you have heard but have no definite idea of what it means when used in the contect of the sentence.

This material reads as follows :

To X you must 1st open a file Yx and then x inorder to xx and xy.

And then run it thru the software that you can't operate because surprise you have discovered that you can't even read the book.

Sorry to hear about your mother Allen, hope things improve.

Hey I've been playing with sanchin on and off for 24 years and I'm still not sure I understand it. But I'm still trying.

I'll kick this C++ around for a while longer. I hate to quit even when I'm beat.

First hint: exercise 1.1 whats the first step

Laird

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 5:54 am

Allen

Lecture II, install complete,reading done(but little understood) exercise 1.1&1.2 attempted (could not figure out the soft ware).

Lecture III completed no problem. (Once again understood very little of the printouts)

In my attempt to complete exercise 1.1 & 1.2 I decided that I should read the instructions
that came with the software. (The manual)

I started to explore and got into setting up a new project and eventually got lost. I deleted everything.

I'm going to reread this stuff a few more times to see if the light comes on.

Should I be reading the manual that came with the software? I know you warned us about straying.

This is giving me a headache

,so off to the gym I go. I'll tackle this again this afternoon.

Laird

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 6:22 pm

Folks, in this program:

#include <stio.h> main(){printf("hello, world"\n);}

What does the semicolon do?

Laird

Deep Sea · Post by **Deep Sea** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 9:43 pm

The semicolon is a statement separator and is found most everywhere. This is one of the ways that the compiler can determine individual "lines of code" as the compiler has no notion of spaces or new lines. So to execute three concurrent printf() functions, for example, you must separate them with semicolons.

printf("Hello ");
printf("Laird. ")
printf("C is easy.");

You can put them all on one line one right after another, and it is only the human who cares.

Vow, you need to have something after the #include other than main else your program will not compile.

Your first program should looks something like the following:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code:</font><HR><pre>
int main()
{

printf("Hello World\n");

return 0;
}
</pre><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

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Allen Moulton from Uechi-ryu Etcetera

Deep Sea · Post by **Deep Sea** » Wed Dec 05, 2001 9:47 pm

... Indented one tab character, 3 or 4 spaces, per level. The UUB code tags above don't do justice to indenting..

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Allen Moulton from Uechi-ryu Etcetera