Simple C question from a newbie. - Getting ascii value of a keypress.
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From: Ben Cottrell on 10 May 2010 15:51 Mike Barnard wrote: >>Finally, I am curious as to why the poster is learning C if he wants to >>use Objective C. Furthermore, why is he planning to learn Objective C >>which is a language that is very little used outside the Apple Mac world? > > > I wish to start with C because C is the language that Objective C and > C++ are built on. I think Francis' point is that learning a particular programming language with the intention of using it as a stepping stone to another language is somewhat unnecessary, and maybe a little counter productive because all languages are very different once you step beyond the absolute basics - even those like C and C++ which would apparently seem to be very similar are fundamentally light years apart once you scratch the surface. To coin a (flaky) analogy - the relationship between C and C++ is somewhat similar to the relationship between Latin and Italian. That's to say, as a native English speaker who might wish to learn Italian, you might decide that in order to gain a fuller understanding of Italian that it would benefit you greatly to learn Latin first - being that Italian is clearly derived from Latin, but anybody fluent in Italian will tell you that its perfectly possible, and somewhat easier, if you just take a course in Italian to start with. However, I still really dislike analogies (As i'm sure you'll have guessed, Mike, from your years reading my ramblings on H-L newsgroups), so do take that comparison with a big pinch of salt :-) Of course, the big difference is that noone uses Latin any more whereas C is very much alive, but there might be a grain of truth that learning Latin will give you a little more deep insight of the origins of Italian - learning C may give you a little more insight about how C++ works, but until you reach a particular level of competence in being able to adjust your mindset to solving programming problems, knowing the underlying details of the language might not help you a great deal. With that in mind, I've never used Objective C (I am not personally much of an enthusiast for apple products), so I have no idea what the learning material for Objective C is like, but it seems to me that the number of excellent beginner level books available for C++ vs the number of similarly easy-reading books for C makes C++ far more beginner friendly. Still, don't let that completely put you off learning C. "most" of what you'll learn will be relevent to Objective C and to C++, but when you take that next step you will undoubtedly have some slightly painful un-learning and re-learning of habits to do.
From: Jaded Hobo on 12 May 2010 16:25 Paul Bibbings wrote: > Mike Barnard <m.barnard.trousers(a)thunderin.co.uk> writes: > >> I don't like the underscores purely because of the two handed key >> input. Lazy? Me? > > It certainly seems like an oddly randam rejection of a common > convention; unless, of course, you have a keyboard that otherwise > permits `one-handed' input of !, ", %, ^, &, *, (, ), +, {, }, :, > ~, <, > and ?. Or will you not be using these either? ;-) > That was why the Commodore CBM3000 series was so brilliant! They had all the numbers in a separate numeric block and all special characters available on the top row above the alpha characters without shift. When I was able to buy my first own computer, a C128, the first thing I did was to reprogram the keyboard table to get the same effect. Antoon > Regards > > Paul Bibbings
From: BobJ on 23 May 2010 12:37
"Mike Barnard" <m.barnard.trousers(a)thunderin.co.uk> wrote in message news:b69eu5p12gflond7qm301hli5eohogab4q(a)4ax.com... > On Sun, 09 May 2010 13:30:50 +0100, Paul Bibbings > <paul.bibbings(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >>> I think I might find out how to make the underscore replace another >>> key. Which one is the dirtyest, the least touched! >> >>From what we've gathered already, I would say that that would be the >>SHIFT key! :-) > > Heh, maybe. But actually, there is a key I never touch. To the left of > the digit 1... > > ` > � > > Who EVER uses these characters? (Googles for keyboard mapping...) > > http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/ Goes to play for a while. They are very useful as delimeters. |