Dan & More – Page 2

Programming Basics for Duncan part II: Primitives

It’s fun to call them primitives because it makes you feel smart but what we are talking about are the most basic things in a program.

Values

The most basic thing in a program is a value. It is what it is. It can be a number, 5 if my favourite, a letter like K or k or perhaps a decimal like 0.7. Or maybe a boolean value like 1 or 0. It is only one thing. It is a single answer to a question. It is not a word, those a strings, which are a list of values.

Programming Basics for Duncan Part I: Hello World

The classic first program on any platform is to output the string “Hello World”. Hang on, string? Yes, it’s a string of characters: H-e-l-l-o-space-W-o-r-l-d. Technically, it’s an array but you don’t need to know about that now.

Cruzin’ Day IV: Poison & Magic

This post is part of a series. You can go back to the first one at Cruzin’ then Cruzin’: Day 2. There’s our sojourn in Mexico and this is part four.

As I write there are four liners in port and we are getting ready to leave. It’s just passed five in the afternoon and the captains are playing silly-buggers with the ships’ horns. We toot twice. The other ship toots back three times. We toot back five. Eventually it gets to Shave-and-a-Haircut. Captain Kate is a playful beast.

Cruzin’ III: Mexico Adventures

This post is part of a series. You can read Cruzin’ and Cruzin’: Day Two that occur before this one

What’s surprising about this trip is that, even though it’s open-bar, I’m not hungover and am waking for the sunrise each day. I never do this at home.

View from cabin of lights on the mainland — There’s the old 08 again.

That over there, that’s the mainland, Met-hi-co. But we’re not going there, we are heading for a little place called Cozmel, an island apparently constructed and operated by cruise-lines.

Cruzin’: Day Two

This post is part of a series. To catch up, go read Cruzin’.

Day two and we are at sea, off the cost of Mexico. Sachie and I wake before dawn, watch a Caribbean sunrise before the worst of the heat and humidity sets in.

I’m still foggy, vulnerable, when there’s a knock on the door. Could it be? Was this it? We lock eyes and I see my own hopes and fears written on Sachie’s face. Even far from sight of land, they know we are here, they know our cabin. They have come.