Hi there,

In two months or so I'm going to have a test of sorts. It doesn't require some particular knowledge, but primitive programming skills might give an advantage (yes, it's allowed to ask for help). It doesn't require more than knowing basic phrases like "if", "look" etc. Can someone give me a good guide on this topic? I can't find something elaborate on this subject and I hoped someone has one.

Thanks in advance, Stargazer

Computer language? Which one? There are (e.g.) plenty of free BASIC interpreters out there.

To tell the truth, I don't know :feel stupid:... I need the very very primitive beginning...

Nah, not stupid. I you don't know then you don't know. BASIC is a simple language that should help you out, though purists would slap my wrists as its considered a thing that lets you pick up bad habits!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BASIC_dialects_by_platform#Microsoft_Windows that list free as well as commercial versions (I'm presuming you use MS Windows.)

Well it really is rather language specific as the paradigm a language is written for will change how certain things are handled but....

Learn about "if/else" statements and how they can be used to control program flow. Learn about "while", "do while" and "for" looping to understand how to do repetitive tasks. Work out how your test will be handling variables and then look at how arrays work in relationship to that.

OMG this sounds like the conversation I was having with my friend that I went to the gig with last night (while I was drunk mind you). He's gonna be teaching me HTML and some other stuff next year, and give me some sort of overview of COBOL (that will be interesting, haha). And he talked about those if/else statements (not sure if that was a reference to COBOL or another language but it was discussed... or something to that effect, remember, I was drunk).

Ok. I think Arquinsiel has got the closest to what I need. But thanks for everyone anyway

For a bit of fun, try this dinky little visual flow chart programming environment: http://www.emu8086.com/source_codes/Flow_Chart_301_BIN.zip It allows you to see what is going on and get a grip of this procedural programming thing.

LS, it doesn't work for some reason....

Download blocked or not unzipped?

Downloaded it and unzipped. It says it can't run some dll file (don't remember the exact name)

Might be a Visual Basic 6.0 "DLL" file, try here to download it, if so.

I found Swaroop C H's 'A Byte of Python' to be very useful in this - a lot of programming language tutorials explain the language on the basis that you're migrating from another language already. ABoP explains the programming concepts as it goes, and it has the bonus of teaching you Python; very handy.

http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Python

HTH.