I started off with assembly around 1962.
****1962****!!!!!!!!!
Goodness, they invented you around the time of the silicon chip!!!
Momo's Holy Turban, 1962...that's even before JavaScript's getDate()
zero-hour!!
Well, I tried messing around with assembly language for the Commodore
64 back in seventh grade...didn't get very far, but I do remember
enjoying the thrill of putting up a sprite!
Interpreters like javascript engines are only making things a little
easier, but they also make the underlying code into a black box, and,
methinks, that is not a good thing if it makes you forget that there is
code inside that black box.
Yes, that's the thing...I wish I could understand how the language
thinks, WRT the underlying code...the true programmers are the ones
doing assembly, I think -- everyone else is just "scripting" at
various levels of complexity....
The assignment statement, called the "Let" statement in antique BASIC:
Dim a3
Let a3 = 20
assigned a value to a variable name, that could only be one letter or one
letter and a number. Then the word Let could be left out, as it became
the "default statement", and the Dim was also skippable:
a3 = 20
confusing lot's of people the same with the comparison statement:
If a3 = 20 Then
The same in javascript:
var myVariable = 20;
where the var has a Dim and a Let functionality combined.
I don't know why that should be so confusing to people...I think it's
just the way things are explained...I think it was Euler or Einstein
who said that it wasn't mathematics if you can't explain it to your
grandmother...I see this "egotism" in too many areas of life, where
people just expect others to follow them....
Here the comparison operator is ==, but that is forgotten more often than
not, people using the oldfashioned =
Okay, but these are little things, which are only a matter of "re-
mapping" one's own "visual language"...like understanding that the
worth of one US Dollar is thirty-five New Taiwan Dollars...I think
folks who get that kind of stuff confused are probably just not
interested in learning and re-mapping their preconceived notions of
the world (I have a friend who will eat absolutely nothing but
"American" food: hot dogs, pizza, hamburgers, and such)....
var myVariable = 9;
if (myVariable = 20) alert(myVariable);
Haha, syntax error: you forgot the braces (curly brackets)!
displaying 20 in the alert window
to the amazement of the sloppy programmer!
Actually, JavaScript shouldn't even display "20" -- nothing had
changed myVariable to 20 from 9....
Both BASIC and Javascript are adaptable languages allowing for sloppyness
of the programmer. I like that, as it is fun to play with, like chess
where you cannot know all there is to know but like to do your utmost.
Interesting you think of it as chess...it's more like chemistry to me
-- alchemy, even!
I got a new book on JavaSCript called "Head First JavaSCript"...it
looks like the most promising book yet, more "workbook" than
"textbook" and I expect to learn all I need to make my website really
interactive by summer's end....