[TwidgetUSN]

Hello everyone.
I am working on a homework assignment and I could use some help. I don't want the answer just given to me but any help/nudge/advice would help.
We have been learning pseudocode but for this assignment we're asked to not use pseudo. We haven't learned C++, Java or C# yet so it's just very basic programming language...nothing that is actually executable. We only need the snippet of code; no full program and no declaring variables.
The question is:

Quote

Write a WHILE loop that squares each number starting with 1 and ends when the square equals 49

So far this is what I've figured out.

int = 1
while squareNum <> 49
     int * int = squreNum
	     int = int + 1

Am I on the right track? Where do I go next?
Any help would be appreciated

This post has been edited by TwidgetUSN: 08 October 2011 - 11:33 AM

[tlhIn`toq]

Well if you haven't learned any actual coding language then anything you write is going to be some flavor of pseudo code. Simply has to be and stands to reason. With that in mind what you have doesn't seem off track to me.

How long have you been in this class and they haven't actually taught any real coding? If its more than 3 days then they are doing their best to stretch out the course for maximum tuition income.

You would have started actual coding in C# around chapter 2 of any $20 self-teaching book. Just because you have a course text book doesn't make it illegal to buy other books or use internet tutorials to learn faster than they are going.

---

Resources, references and suggestions for new programmers. - Updated Sep 2011

---

Spoiler

Finding answers to specific problems:
Sometimes just knowing where to look can make all the difference. Google is your friend.
Search with either "C#" or "MSDN" as the first word: "MSDN Picturebox", "C# Custom Events", "MSDN timer" etc.
How to do a good search that will get you targeted answers.

Once you have that MSDN page that describes the function, you may not be familiar with out to actually get useful information from that page. There is a LOT of data there. So what is the important parts? Read this guide to reading the MSDN.

Don't think you are the first person to ask a question. Try a search on this site to see if someone has already brought up this problem. Also, as soon as you post your question go to the bottom of the updated page: You will see where the system has already analyzed your question and tried to find similar threads for the same question, so check those links out.

But honestly, just typing away and seeing what pops up in Intellisense is going to make your self-education take 20 years. You can learn by trying to reverse engineer the language through banging on the keyboard experimentation - or you can learn by doing the tutorials and following a good "How to learn C#" book. There are so many great "How do I build my first application" tutorials on the web... There are dozens of "Learn C# in 21 days", "My first C# program" type books at your local book seller or even public library.

Beginner:
Build a Program Now! in Visual C# by Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-2542-5 is a terrific book that has you build a Windows Forms application, a WPF app, a database application, your own web browser.

Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

D.I.C. C# Resource page Start here
Intro to C# online tutorial then here...
C# control structures then here.
MSDN Beginner Developer video series
MSDN video on OOP principals, making classes, constructors, accessors and method overloading
MSDN Top guideline violations, know what to avoid before you do it.
Design patterns as diagrams

I hate sending people to another site when we have such good tutorials here, but this series shouldn't be overlooked.
Programming OOP in C# - Part 1
Programming OOP in C# - Part 2
Programming OOP in C# - Part 3
Programming OOP in C# - Part 4
Programming OOP in C# - Part 5

Writing a text file is always one of the first things people want to do, in order to store data like high-scores, preferences and so on.
Writing a text file tutorial.
Reading a text file tutorial.

Have you seen the 500+ MSDN Code Samples? They spent a lot of time creating samples and demos. It seems a shame to not use them.

Intermediate:
The tutorials below walk through making an application including inheritance, custom events and custom controls, object serialization and more.
Bulding an application - Part 1
Building an application - Part 2
Quick and easy custom events
Separating data from GUI - PLUS - serializing the data to XML
Passing values between forms/classes
Decouple your multi-threaded work from the GUI so forms don't hang

Working with environmental variables
'Why do we use delegates?' thread
And everyone always wants to connect to a database, right out of the gate so Database tutorials right here on DIC

C# Cookbooks
Are a great place to get good code, broken down by need, written by coding professionals. You can use the code as-is, but take the time to actually study it. These professionals write in a certain style for a reason developed by years of experience and heartache.

Everyone:
Debugging tutorial
Debugging tips
Debugging in detail
Great debugging tips
It still doesn't work, article

I urge you to work through the C# learning series here on DIC, and to work a self-teaching book from cover to cover before you even think about designing your own applications.
Microsoft Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your productivity, Microsoft press, ISBN 0-7356-2640-5 Has many, many great, real-world tips that I use all the time.

These are just good every-day references to put in your bookmarks.
MSDN C# Developers Center with tutorials
Welcome to Visual Studio
Free editions of Visual Studio 2010

Let me also throw in a couple tips:

• You have to program as if everything breaks, nothing works, the cyberworld is not perfect, the attached hardware is flakey, the network is slow and unreliable, the harddrive is about to fail, every method will return an error and every user will do their best to break your software. Confirm everything. Range check every value. Make no assumptions or presumptions.
  
  
• Take the extra 3 seconds to rename your controls each time you drag them onto a form. The default names of button1, button2... button54 aren't very helpful. If you rename them right away to something like btnOk, btnCancel, btnSend etc. it helps tremendously when you make the methods for them because they are named after the button by the designer.btnSend_Click(object sender, eventargs e) is a lot easier to maintain than button1_click(object sender, eventargs e)
  
  
• You aren't paying for variable names by the byte. So instead of variables names of a, b, c go ahead and use meaningful names like Index, TimeOut, Row, Column and so on. You should avoid 'T' for the timer. Amongst other things 'T' is commonly used throughout C# for Type and this will lead to problems. There are naming guidelines you should follow so your code confirms to industry standards. It makes life much easier on everyone around you, including those of us here to help. If you start using the standards from the beginning you don't have to retrain yourself later.
  
  
• Try to avoid having work actually take place in GUI control event handlers. It is usually better to have the GUI handler call other methods so those methods can be reused and make the code more readible.
  
  Spoiler

  
  

  btnSave(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveMenuItem(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveContextMenu(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  FormMain_Closing(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      if (IsDirty) SavePreferences();
  }
  

  
  
  
• I strongly suggest installing VMware or some other virtualization technology on your development PC so you can create a couple virtual computers for testing. This would allow you to debug and test inside: WinXP32, XP64, Vista, Win7x32, Win7x64... etc. without having to actually have 5 physical PC's. Visual Studio will let you send the debug directly into one of these virtual machines so you can watch it operate, check its variables, see the crashes and so on just as if it were debugging on your real machine.
  
  
• This can't be stressed enough in today's world of cell phone messaging:
  Don't use txt/sms/leet/T9 speak like: u no, u r, dnt, wut i m do-n, coz, al gud, b4, ny1, and so on like this guy:
  
  dis not b d'hood dawg... You are sitting at a real keyboard with a real monitor, not a cell phone. You are not here texting your high school posse to come to your kegger after their shift at Taco Bell. You are here asking for help from senior coding professionals who graciously donate their valuable time to helping the next generation of coders with their chosen craft. Please try to show them, yourself and the industry some respect by writing at least at an eighth grade level. (IE: English not ebonics or SMS, real words, punctuation and so on). If you can't take your own problem/question seriously enough to write like an adult, then why would you expect anyone else to take it seriously?

This post has been edited by tlhIn`toq: 08 October 2011 - 11:58 AM

[TwidgetUSN]

It is a programming essentials class and we are in week four. We've covered the basics with classes, declaring variables, IF statements, loops and arrays. Here's an example of the most in depth code we've covered so far.

if dep = 0 then
     count0 = count0+1
else
     if dep = 1 then
etc etc etc

Nothing deep yet so it's really hard to find help online because most guides I've found cover stuff we haven't even reached yet and we're not allowed to use anything past our level of learning.

[TwidgetUSN]

I think I've figured it out. I just needed someone to let me know if I'm on the right track
How does this look?

int = 1
while squareNum <> 49
     int * int = squareNum
     int = int + 1
     output  int, “squared is”, squareNum
endwhile
output	int, “squared is”, squareNum
output “This program will only square up to 7 squared which is 49”

This post has been edited by TwidgetUSN: 08 October 2011 - 01:09 PM

[tlhIn`toq]

FOUR WEEKS... and you haven't actually written any working code in a known language? Frak me! Sounds like a total rip off in my mind.

ANY self-teaching book available at Amazon or Fry's Electronics would have had you building applications long ago.


Build a Program Now! in Visual C# by Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-2542-5 is a terrific book that has you build a Windows Forms application, a WPF app, a database application, your own web browser.

Just order it and go through it. You will be slam dunking this course in a week.

[TwidgetUSN]

I will definitely take a look at that book, thank you.