Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................1 Who Should Buy This Book ...........................................................................2 How This Book Is Organized ..........................................................................2 Part I: Programming a Computer .........................................................2 Part II: Learning Programming with Liberty BASIC ...........................3 Part III: Advanced Programming with Liberty BASIC ........................3 Part IV: Dealing with Data Structures .................................................3 Part V: Algorithms: Telling the Computer What to Do .....................4 Part VI: Internet Programming .............................................................4 Part VII: The Part of Tens .....................................................................4 How to Use This Book ....................................................................................5 Foolish assumptions .............................................................................5 Icons used in this book .........................................................................5
Part I: Programming a Computer ...................................7
Chapter 1: Learning Computer Programming for the First Time . . . . . .9 Why Learn Computer Programming? ...........................................................9 How Does a Computer Program Work? ......................................................13 Programming is problem-solving ......................................................14 Programming isn't difficult; it's just time-consuming .....................15 What Do I Need to Know to Program a Computer? ..................................16
Chapter 2: All about Programming Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Why So Many Different Programming Languages? ...................................19 The joy of assembly language ............................................................20 C: The portable assembler .................................................................22 High-level programming languages ...................................................24 Rapid Application Development (RAD)
programming languages ..................................................................27 Database programming languages ....................................................29 Scripting programming languages ....................................................30 Web-page programming languages ...................................................32 So What's the Best Programming Language to Learn? .............................34
Chapter 3: How to Write a Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Before You Write Your Program ..................................................................37 The program's users ...........................................................................38 The target computer ...........................................................................38 Your own programming skill ..............................................................39
Beginning Programming For Dummies, 3rd Edition x
The Technical Details of Writing a Program ..............................................40 Prototyping ..........................................................................................41 Choosing a programming language ...................................................42 Defining how the program should work ...........................................43 The Life Cycle of a Typical Program ...........................................................44 The development cycle ......................................................................44 The maintenance cycle .......................................................................45 The upgrade cycle ...............................................................................46
Chapter 4: The Tools of a Computer Programmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Writing Programs in an Editor .....................................................................48 Using a Compiler or an Interpreter .............................................................50 Compilers .............................................................................................50 Interpreters ..........................................................................................51 P-code: A combination compiler and interpreter ...........................51 So what do I use? .................................................................................53 Squashing Bugs with a Debugger ................................................................53 Writing a Help File .........................................................................................55 Creating an Installation Program ................................................................56
Untitled Part 1
Start from the beginning
