Beginning Ring Programming: From Novice to Professional

Description

Gain a gentle introduction to the world of Ring programming with clarity as a first concern using a lot of practical examples. The first part lays the foundations of the language and its basic features (data types, control structures, functions, and classes). The unique way to rigorously structure Ring programs is also explained.  Then, in the second part you’ll discover Ring inputs, outputs, and what is in between. You’ll use the basic constructs of computer logic (sequence, selection, and iteration) to build simple and complex logic flows. You’ll go over the common mistakes that lead to code complexity, by example, and cover several strategies to solve them (refactoring, code cleansing, and good variable naming). Then, you’ll see a visual illustration of how Ring deals with scopes at the local, object, and global levels. In part three, you’ll play with two artifacts vital to Ring programming: functions and objects. You’ll learn how they can be composed to solve a problem and how advanced programming paradigms, such as declarative and natural, are beautifully implemented on top of them. As part of the discussion, you’ll also work on game programming. You’ll learn how you design your game declaratively, in Ring code, just as if you were designing it in visual software. Finally, the author lays out how programming can be understood in a gamified context. You will be told the truth about how gaming can be a better metaphor to achieve mastery of Ring programming. This book is for those who are passionate about writing beautiful, expressive, and learnable code. It has been designed so you can enjoy a beginner-friendly set of knowledge about Ring, and benefit from a one-stop collection of lessons learned from real-world, customer-facing programming projects. What You Will Learn Get started with Ring and master its data types, I/O, functions, and classesCarry out structural, object-oriented, functional, declarative, natural, and meta programming in RingUse the full power of Ring to refactor program code and develop clean program architecturesQuickly design professional-grade video games on top of the Ring game engine Who This Book Is For Beginners looking for a consistent and hackable programming environment with a strong flavor of learnability and expressiveness.     Table of Contents About the Author About the Technical Reviewer Acknowledgments Introduction Foreword Chapter 1: Getting Started with Ring What You Will Learn Download and Installation Selecting the Appropriate Installer Discovering the Ring Installation Folder Launching Ring Notepad Your First Ring Program Organizing Yourself Asking Ring Questions From Date to Time A Ring Flower: timeList Function Making timeList Expressive Listening to Ring When It Complains Playing with Lists Expressiveness: First Round Expressiveness: Second Round The Final Listing of the “Hello Ring!” Program The “Very Final” Listing: One More Adjustment! Documentation and the Help System Any “Hello, World!” Tutorial? Say Hello in the Console Say Hello in a Web Page Say Hello in the Window Say Hello on Your Mobile Phone Say Hello in a Game Say Hello in Plain Arabic Introductory Article by Mahmoud Fayed Dynamic Transformation of Types Using Lists During Their Definition Exiting from More Than One Loop Using the Ring Help System Three Ways to Access Ring Documentation High-Level Overview of Ring Documentation Practical Use Cases of the Help System Frequently Asked Questions Other Resources on Ring Asking the Community Video Tutorials About Ring Critics and Reviews of Ring Summary Chapter 2: Data Types in Ring Nine Things You Will Learn How Ring Sees the World Types and Type System: A First Flavor Meet the Gang of Four Missing Members of the Gang A Little Bit of Magic Statics and Dynamics of the Ring Type System A Reference Architecture Checking Data Types Converting Between Data Types User-Defined Data Types Implicit Conversion and Lexical Scoping Under the Hood: C Language Type System More on Data Types More on Numbers More on Strings More on Objects More on Lists Capturing the Potential of Dynamic Ring Summary Chapter 3: Inputs to Ring Nine Things You Will Learn Inputs in the Code Using Variables to Host Data in Code Avoiding Magical Numbers Mitigating Code Complexity Refactoring the Data Side Refactoring the Code Side Separating Between Concerns Using Global Variables Inputs in the Console Using the Give Command Getting Arguments from the Command Line Inputs from the GUI Creating Windows in the Form Designer Understanding the Generated Files from the Form Designer Understanding Events Fabricating the User Interface Responding to User Events Enhancing the User Experience Three Values of MVC in GUI Design Code Reusability Code Testability Targeting of Multiple Platforms Inputs from Text Files Reading Data from a Text File Specifying the NorthAfrica App Seven Steps to the NorthAfrica App Creating Conventions and Configuration Files Transforming Text Data into a Ring List Preparing Data for Showing a Graph Rendering the Graph Inside a Text String Inputs from the Database Connecting to a SQLite Database Designing a Clean Data Acquisition Architecture Switching Between Text and Database Data Sources Implementing a Universal Data Connector Adapting the Connector to the Database Unifying the Data Format Delivered by the Connector Testing Our Data Acquisition Architecture Final Refinement Other Inputs Summary Chapter 4: Outputs of Ring Nine Things You Will Learn Before We Start Refactoring the Right Side Analyzing the Existing Architecture Designing a Target Architecture Using See Instead of ? Inviting BASIC into Ring Using the Standard print() Function Output to a File Output to a Database Output to a Web Page Studying the Feasibility of Printing cGraph in a Web Page Yet Another Architecture Refactoring Correctly Implementing the Web Target Writing HTML in Ring Output to a Printed File What’s Next Chapter 5: Crafting Ring Algorithms Nine Things You Will Learn Before We Start: Long Live Visuality! A Snapshot of Drakon: What and Why? Three Forms of Logic Flows Sequence Selection (or Branching) Iteration (or Looping) Difference Between for and for in Infinite Loops More on Logic Flows Vertical Selections Deep Selections Condition-First Iteration: while Condition-Last Iteration: do again Multiple Selections Other Ring Control Structure Techniques Using for in to Modify Lists Stepping with the for Statement Exiting from One or Two Loops Using the loop Keyword Short-Circuit Evaluation Exceptions (try/catch) Useful Details About Evaluation Three Commandments of the Logic Craftperson The First Commandment: Clean Order The Second Commandment: One Start, One End The Third Commandment: Clean Logical Parts Before You Leave: Homework! Summary Chapter 6: Juggling with Scopes Nine Things You Will Learn Scopes: Why Should You Care? Three Variable Scopes: Global, Local, and Object Global Scope Local Scope Global Is Visible Inside Local Localizing Variables The Special Case of Loops Object Scope Visibility of the Object Variable and the Object Attributes Visibility of an Object Attribute from the Local Scope of a Function Visibility of an Object from the Local Scope of a Function Visibility of an Object Created Inside a Function Local Scope of Object Methods Object Scope Switching Using Braces Case of self and this Keywords Object Scope Access Using Dot Operator Managing Conflictual Scopes Conflict Between the Global and Object Scopes Conflict Between the Object and Local Scopes Conflict Between the Global and Local Scopes Tracing Variables Using TraceLib A Gift: Extended wapp.ring Program Summary Chapter 7: Functions, Objects, and Beyond Nine Things You Will Learn Functions and Functional Style Defining and Calling Functions Sending Parameters and Returning Values Using a List for Optional Parameters Recursion: When a Function Calls Itself Beyond Functions, the Functional Programming Paradigm Three Pros Three Cons Areas of Application Pure Functions Immutable State First-Class Functions Higher-Order Functions Anonymous Functions Nested Functions Composing Functions Fabricating Functions Comparing Functions Objects and Object Orientation Creating Objects from Classes Initializing Objects Accessing Objects Using Setters and Getters Sending and Returning Objects A Recap: Object Structure and Class Event Mechanism Inheritance and Composition Composing Objects with Inheritance Composing Objects with Aggregation Composing Objects with Concatenation Composing Objects with Delegation Your Recipe for Object Composition Securing the Object World with Encapsulation Managing a Collection of Objects Changing the Object Operators Interacting with Objects Inside Braces Beyond Objects, Declarative Programming in Ring Beyond Objects, Natural Programming in Ring Building a Natural Layer for Your Program Parsing a Natural Statement Inside Your Code Enabling the User to Provide Natural Statements Capturing Numbers in Natural Statements Capturing Errors Inside Natural Code Summary Chapter 8: Designing Games in Ring Nine Things You Will Learn A Personal Perspective on Game Programming Three Fundamentals of Game Programming Game Loop Game Timing Game Engine The Game Class The GameObject Class The Sprite Class Text Class The Animate Class The Sound Class The Map Class Mastering the Big Picture Twelve Practical Skills in Your Bucket Skill 1: Opening a Window to Host the Game Skill 2: Setting the Ambiance Skill 3: Populating the Game with Objects Adding Text Adding a Sprite Adding a Drawing Adding a Sound Adding a Tile Map Skill 4: Animating Objects Skill 5: Intervening in the Game State Skill 6: Querying Game Objects Getting an Object by Its Index Filtering Objects by Type Getting an Object with Its Name Skill 7: Intercepting Events Skill 8: Detecting Collisions Skill 9: Implementing and Testing the Gameplay Skill 10: Organizing and Refactoring Code Skill 11: Distributing Your Game on Many Platforms Skill 12: Monitoring Your Game Performance A Complete Game in Ring Before You Make It, Play It! Loading Globals Write the Game Loop Write the Game World Function Write the Game Initialization Function Protect the World Frontiers Attack the Enemies Accept to Be Attacked! You’re Captured, Write a Collision Function Destroy the Enemies, Without Mercy! It Exploded, Show the Fire! Monitor Your Energy Grow the Stars, They Are Bonuses! The Stars, Captured! To Be Captured, They Must Be Harvested Your Score, Updated Play Again or Quit? Sure, I Want to Play Again! Game Over! Beyond Gaming, Video Games Culture Chapter 9: A Gamified Foundation for Mastering Ring Nine Things You Will Learn Programming: Toward a New Metaphor A Critic of the “Construction” Metaphor The Problem of Software Construction Design of a Solution Strategy Gaming as a New Metaphor for Programming Defining the Word Metaphor Defining Programming Gaming, as a Programming Metaphor Programming, Redefined! A Target Skillset of Our Gamified Learning Experience Ringoria, the Programming Land of Ring The Ringorialand Map The Floating Castle Watermania The Flower of Athingza The Bay of Sand The Ringuter The Cap of Lights The Training Camp The Underground Station The Royal Library In the Pocket of Every Ringler An Iron Compass A Ringometer A Sociogram A Set of Teamcards A Mission “Titiey” A Spectrogram Rules of the Game Believe in Ringaros Be Clean Be Strong Be Wise Be Beautiful The Holy Book of Ringoria Follow the Roadmap of King Ringamesh Ringza by Heart, Ringza by Hand! Ringza by Heart Ringza by Hand Ringza Is a Visual Language of Thinking Harvest the Stars, Design a Learning Path You Are the Ringler! Conclusion Appendix A: A Dialogue with Mahmoud Fayed Network Programming in Ring Composition over Inheritance Parallelization in Ring A Language Copying Ring Ring Data Type System About the Ring Compiler and VM When the Default Value of NULL Is Changed Speed of Ring List vs. C Code Array Level Designer in Ring Games Advice on the Use of Operator Overloading Numeric Overflow Error A Strange Behavior in len() of Lists Your Approach to Testing The Secret Behind Mahmoud’s Responsiveness The Story Behind the Name of Ring Ring vs. Python Ring in 10 Years Monetizing PWCT Ring Foundation Ring vs. PWCT Your Final Word to the Reader Index