[Cuis-dev] Hello, new Cuis smalltalk user here!

[Phil B]

Is the issue that you don't understand how/why the math is being done on
the letters?  If that's it, it's an old trick (older than programming) that
you can convert each character to a numeric value[1], perform some
calculations to transform them to something else, then back to characters
again.  It's a common technique for simple ciphers/encodings.  If that's
not it, it would really be helpful if you could explain what specifically
about the math is throwing you.

One word of warning: while the Cuis Book is an easy read, it does have more
math[2] than your typical pre-college level intro to programming book for
some of the core game calculations which can't be avoided when you're
dealing with thrust, projectiles and gravity.  So unless you are prepared
to just take some of the math parts coming up on faith and skip over
exercises as needed, you may find some of the later sections frustrating.
This level of math isn't needed to learn how to program, but is to
implement the particular game the book covers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII

[2] My estimate just from a quick scan is intermediate Algebra with some
basic Trigonometry.  You don't need to understand the math to just *use*
the code presented, but will if you want to understand what's going on with
it.


On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 10:45 PM Joseph Turco <jturk90 at protonmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks for getting back to me.
>
> I understand how yo highlight messages and such to figure out how they
> work. Its the math I didn't understand. I'm also having a hard time
> grasping how some things work like how some statements are written. Another
> example I had a problem was the question asking to make a method for the
> Star mass. I didn't get the influence of adding a class declaration at the
> top.
>
> Maybe I just don't get OOP. I don't know, as I said I'm very new to
> programming and I'll also admit I have very basic math skills. Sorry if I'm
> bothering you at all...
>
>
> Sent from ProtonMail mobile
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> On Jul 16, 2021, 10:39 PM, Phil B via Cuis-dev < cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st>
> wrote:
>
>
> If you highlight the message you don't understand, right click and then
> select 'implementors of it' you'll see a list of every implementation of
> the method in the image (including a couple that have good comments
> explaining what it does.)  This will work for any message in that
> expression (to:, collect: (which was missing the colon), asciiValue, -, +,
> \\, asCharacter)  You can also pull apart the expression and see what the
> different parts of it do such as ($A to: $Z), $A asciiValue etc. by
> copy/pasting them into a Workspace and printIt (either via the context menu
> or keyboard shortcut)
>
> On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 9:07 PM Joseph Turco via Cuis-dev <
> cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:
>
>> Hello Hilaire.
>>
>> You mentioned about me looking for anything in the book, and I do have
>> one thing to mention. Some of the exercises are kinda difficult and I've
>> had to goto the solution. Most of them made sense after looking at the
>> solution, but some of them I don't understand. For example.
>>
>> Exercise 4.9
>>
>> ($A to: $Z) collect [:c | (c asciiValue - 65 + 3 \\ 26 + 65) asCharacter]
>> .
>>
>> I have no clue how that math calculation works at all.
>>
>>
>> Sent from ProtonMail mobile
>>
>>
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> On Jul 15, 2021, 11:40 AM, Hilaire Fernandes via Cuis-dev <
>> cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hi Joseph,
>>
>> As your eyes are new on the book. It will be very useful to let us know
>> about any issue or misunderstanding you encounter while struding the book.
>>
>> Happy reading
>>
>> Hilaire
>>
>>
>> Le 15/07/2021 à 16:01, Joseph Turco via Cuis-dev a écrit :
>>
>> Oh wow thanks! I downloaded the book and it seems like its a lot better
>> suited. I'll follow that instead.
>>
>> --
>> GNU Dr. Geohttp://drgeo.euhttp://blog.drgeo.eu
>>
>> --
>> Cuis-dev mailing list
>> Cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st
>> https://lists.cuis.st/mailman/listinfo/cuis-dev
>>
>>
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