In my C programming books, I often use the directions on a shampoo bottle as an example of basic programming:
1. Lather.
2. Rinse.
3. Repeat.
Another real-life example of programming techniques happens in music. Specifically, cumulative songs are representative of loops. This type of song includes 99 Bottles of Beer and the holiday favorite, The Twelve Days of Christmas.
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Parsing is the process of sifting through a chunk of data to look for significant information. It’s a big topic.
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The Hailstone sequence is based on the theory is that you can perform a specific calculation on any positive integer to create a series of numbers. No matter which positive integer you start with, eventually the sequence ends with the value 1.
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All the nonsense that takes place in programming happens because it’s possible to change the value of a bit from 0 to 1 and back again. The general concept is known as a toggle switch: The item can be set and reset between on and off positions.
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The term sounds terrifying, but it doesn’t need to be: Data analysis is the process of using code to examine data and come up with some sort of conclusion. Obviously it helps to know the type of conclusion before you write the code. Only in science fiction does someone say, “What do you make all of those seemingly boring numbers, Mr. Computer?”
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The spelling alphabet is a tool used by the military, police, and other professionals. It helps them to sound cool when they spell names. You’ve probably attempted to spell that way yourself, even if you didn’t know any official spelling alphabet. Lots of people say, “N as in Nancy.” That’s how the spelling alphabet works.
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In last month’s Exercise, the assignment was to craft a single frame in a game of bowling. This time, you need to stitch together 10 frames to simulate bowling an entire game.
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I went bowling the other day. Actually, I went to watch people bowl. I’m a terrible bowler, having never rolled anything higher than 148 in my life. Breaking 100 is a rare occasion. But one thing I can do well is understand how the scoring works.
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Thanks to Mr. Spock (and God bless you, Mr. Nimoy!), many people think of Chess when they think of computer programming. Unlike mankind’s favorite Vulcan, coding your own computer chess game would be a tremendous undertaking. Even so, you can start with the basics and write a program that outputs a chessboard.
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You see them all the time, mostly as “busy” gizmos. They are animations that spin or dance to deceive you into believing that the software is really doing something. But they’re merely animations. In fact, they’re very simple animations that require practically effortless coding.
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