How to start programming - guides and links for many languages

**garduino** · January 12th, 2007

Squeak

Official Site: http://www.squeak.org/
Free Smalltalk Books: http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks.html
Squeak wiki: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/
Seaside site (framework to build state of the art web apps): http://www.seaside.st/
Squeak Scriptaculous Demo: http://scriptaculous.seasidehosting.st/
Squeak fast start: http://www.arsol.net/arte/squeakXXI/squeakXXI.htm
Successful Squeak application: http://www.dabbledb.com/
Lots of sample web squeak-seaside apps: http://www.seasidehosting.st/
Squeak source code repository: http://www.squeaksource.com/
Squeak People: http://people.squeakfoundation.org/
Squeak Foundation: http://www.squeakfoundation.org/
European Smalltalk User Group: http://www.esug.org/
Planet Squeak: http://planet.squeak.org/
Squeak Notes: http://squeak.joyful.com/SqueakNotes
Useful blogs:
http://onsmalltalk.com/
http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/

**zolly** · January 14th, 2007

Is Python used for making applications (with GUI) in Ubuntu ?
I'm talking about applications that are installed when I enter in GNOME in Ubuntu.

**justin_c18** · January 14th, 2007

Originally Posted by ghostdog74

PYTHON

1) Perl To Python Migration - Martin C. Brown
2) Introduction to Tkinter - Fredrik Lundh
3) Python Developer's Handbook - André Dos Santos Lessa
4)OReilly - Programming Python 3rd Edition
5) Python 2.1 Bible.pdf
6)Oreilly Python Cookbook 2Nd Edition
7)Python Phrasebook: Essential Code and Commands - Brad Dayley
8)Apress.Beginning.Python.From.Novice.to.Professiona l
9) Dive into Python
10)GUI_Programming_with_Python-QT_Edition - Boudewijn Rempt
11) H.Deitel - Python - How to Program
12) New Riders - Python Essential Reference, 2Nd Edition
13) OReilly - Core Python Programming
14) OReilly - Learning Python 2nd edition
15) OReilly - Python & XML
16) OReilly - Python In A Nutshell
17) OReilly - Python Programming on Win32
18) OReilly - Python Standard Library
19) Python text processing - David Mertz
20) Thinking in Python - Bruce Eckel

UNIX

1) Oreilly Unix CD bookshelf
2) Unix Shells by Example 3rd edition

Thanks for the URl's dude! they're really going to help my progression

**po0f** · January 14th, 2007

zolly & justin_c18,

This isn't a discussion thread. If you have any questions or comments, please post another thread in the forum. Thank you.

**Engnome** · January 16th, 2007

Perl

What is it good for?

Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) is useful for dealing with lots of data, the scientists that mapped the human genome found it invaluable.

There are many myths about perl. Ten perl myths is a good read if you have only heard about perl from friends without any experience in perl. Perl is more than just simple scripts, you can make interfaces using glade and the gtk bindings and create complete programs. Perl is also being used to write CGI scripts. It is known as one of "the three Ps" (Perl, Python, PHP)

Perl is often used as a glue language, tying together systems and interfaces that were not specifically designed to interoperate, and for "data munging", ie. converting or processing large amounts of data for tasks like creating reports. In fact, these strengths are intimately linked. The combination makes perl a popular all-purpose tool for system administrators, particularly as short programs can be entered and run on a single command line.

(copy pasted last paragraph from wikipedia.

which btw makes this text licensed under the GNU doc license.)

Places to go:

Wikipedia article. (very good)

Robert's Perl Tutorial

Very short beginners tutorial.

If you wan't a paperback book.

The perl documentation.

perl modules for alot of things.

**runningwithscissors** · January 21st, 2007

C

Why?
Everyone and their mother knows C. Still a few links are always helpful.

For those who do not know C, unlike their mother, it is a very easy language to learn. It is fast. It is pervasive. It beats the hell out of all those claiming to be its successors.

Okay. This is starting to sound like zealotry. So, a simple reason: There is no good reason to not learn some basic C programming.

Tools
You'll need some tools. I have never used Debian, so I don't know how to install from the Debian repos.

Here are some of the best:
The compiler: GCC, of course. (and the toolchain: binutils, glibc etc.) Maybe part of the build-essential package on Debian-based distros.
The editor of legend: vim. http://vim.sourceforge.net/

Links
Surprisingly few, in fact:

First and foremost:
Learn some:
1) http://www.crasseux.com/books/ctutorial/
2) http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html#ctutorial (Mind the zealotry, don't be fooled by the C++ evangelists)
3) http://members.cox.net/midian/articles/ansic1.htm

Try some examples: http://www.paulgriffiths.net/program/c/

A rather compressed but dated resource: HTML Downloadable
PDF
Should you be the kind who likes to curl up on the sofa while studying programming:
http://www.amazon.com/C-Programming-.../dp/0131103628

Second:
Enhance your knowledge: http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/man...ode/index.html

Third:
Clear any doubts: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/C-faq/faq/

Enjoy.

**samjh** · January 25th, 2007

Time to introduce one of my favourite "old-school" languages... Pascal! To those who come from that old-school comp sci background will know what it is. For those who don't... read on.

Pascal

What is Pascal?

Pascal is a highly structured programming language designed in the early 1970s by Dr Nikolaus Wirth.

Pascal grew out of Dr Wirth's desire to develop a highly structured programming language which will be used to teach structured programming to students. It was based on the influential but unsuccessful ALGOL project, in which Dr Wirth was a contributor. He based Pascal on ALGOL, but modified it heavily to remove ALGOL's weaknesses and make it more useful for general-purpose programming.

For the next 20 years, Pascal became a staple programming language for computer scientists and IT professionals. Assembly, C, and Pascal were major competitors in the field of system programming in the 70s and 80s.

Apple was heavy user of Pascal, later introducing object-oriented extensions, known as Object Pascal. Pascal was the principal programming language of the Apple Macintosh. It still has a strong following in the MacOS programming community.

Pascal also became very popular for Windows programming, thanks to Delphi. Delphi was an evolved, object-oriented, RAD tool which grew from the wildly popular Turbo Pascal compiler and IDE. Delphi and its dialect of Pascal competed strongly against Microsoft's Visual Basic for the Windows market, but eventually fell behind due to bad management by Borland during early 2000s. Delphi is still widely regarded as setting the unofficial standard for modern Pascal language features and compiler capability.

What's so special about Pascal?

Pascal is a very structured language, and its code is very easy to manage. Code is easily readable, yet is not heavily verbose. It strikes the balance between hard-to-read terse code (eg. C, C++) and ridiculously verbose code (eg. COBOL, Java, VB).

Most major Pascal compilers allow the integration of Intel or AT&T syntax Assembler within Pascal source. That's right folks: Assembly execution speed within an easy-to-read structured code base.

The combination of the above two features make Pascal as powerful (if not more powerful) as C in terms of system-level control, but without the penalty of archaic source code readability and maintenance.

Even using Pascal code alone will yield very fast executables. Pascal-coded executables compiled using Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) is only slightly slower than C-coded executables compiled using GCC.

Another interesting feature of Pascal is smart linking. This is implemented in Free Pascal, which can statically link only the portions of libraries used by your software. This makes Pascal programs easy to distribute for Unix/Linux based systems. Pascal's compilation process is also designed to be very portable across different processing platforms.

What does it look like?

Here is an example of classic Pascal code for reading ten numbers from console and displaying the sum and average (note that Pascal is not case sensitive):

Code:

program Average;

var
  num, sum, avg: real;
  i : integer;

begin
  sum := 0.0;
  for i := 1 to 10 do
  begin
    read(num);
    sum := sum + num;
  end;
  avg := sum/10;
  writeln('Sum =', num);
  writeln('Average =', avg);
end.

See that the code is very readable and easy to understand, even if you are not familiar with Pascal. Although somewhat verbose for a simple program, the structured layout of the source code and its readability pays dividends for more complex source code. In fact, equally readable C code is similar in its verbosity as the Pascal example shown above.

What flavour of Pascal should I use?

This is dictated by the compiler you use. The best compiler in the free-and-open-source world is Free Pascal, which in my opinion is the best Pascal compiler apart from Borland/Codegear's Delphi. It provides very advanced compilation features, fast and efficient compilation, and compatibility with a wide range of Pascal dialects, including both Apple and Delphi's Object Pascal syntax.

Get Free Pascal here: www.freepascal.org

Free Pascal includes an IDE based on the Free Vision library. Free Vision is the Free Pascal implementation of the Turbo Vision console user interface library. It is similar in appearance to the N-Curses CUI used in some Unix/Linux software.

Easiest way to install is to download the .tar package for Linux. Unpack the .tar file (no need to unpack the other tar files inside it though), and run the install.sh script. Just watch out for prompts where directories are pre-specified in square brackets: these require you to type in a directory for copying files, or just press enter to install to the default directory in the square brackets.

Alternatively, you can use the .deb package download.

If you are into GUI programming or want a RAD environment using Pascal, use the Lazarus IDE: www.lazarus.freepascal.org

Lazarus is built on the Free Pascal Compiler, and uses its own GUI library based on GTK1.2 and Win32 (Qt and GTK2 is WIP). It comes with a visual form designer and various other development tools for rapid GUI creation.

GNU Pascal is also a popular Pascal compiler, distributed as part of the GNU Compiler Collection: http://www.gnu-pascal.de/

Want to find out more?

Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_...mming_language
A short introduction to Pascal: http://www.taoyue.com/tutorials/pascal
Free ebook on Pascal: http://www.marcocantu.com/epascal/default.htm
Pascal resource site: http://pascal-central.com/

**DarkW0lf** · February 17th, 2007

Assembly ( HLA )

http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/
http://www.masm32.com/board/
http://www.geocities.com/kahlinor/HLA.html

Assembly ( Gas )

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Assembly-HOWTO/index.html
http://www.cs.utah.edu/dept/old/texinfo/as/as_toc.html

**Dylnuge** · February 24th, 2007

I would like to add that Java is also nice because it is its own platform, which means that it will run on any system that has the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) installed. So if you want to make small applications that you can show your friends (still running windows), Java apps will run on any system. (Well, at least Windows, Mac, Solaris, Linux).