FreeBASIC 1.10.1 Programming in 14 Days

BASIC taught as a compiled language, in fourteen days of work.

Each day states a small number of rules, shows every one of them working in a complete program, and then hands the day back as drills. Nothing is asserted that is not shown: every listing in this book compiled, and every printed output block is what the run returned.

This is the BASIC that compiles to a native executable, not the one that came with a home computer. What is here is the type system and why Integer is not the width a C programmer expects, the statements, procedures, arrays and strings, the records you write yourself and the padding inside them, pointers and the memory you allocate, objects and virtual methods, separate compilation, runtime errors, files both text and binary, the preprocessor, tests, measurement, and the C interface - all of it from the command line with one compiler and nothing else.

What You Get

• 316 worked examples, each a whole program that compiles and runs
• 316 figures, one per example, drawn for a black-and-white press
• 1022 problems over five sets a chapter, with worked solutions to half of them
• One library, cardfile, a card index built from scratch across the two weeks
• 386 pages

The Fourteen Days

• Day 1 - THE PROGRAM AND ITS TYPES
• Day 2 - DECIDING AND REPEATING
• Day 3 - PROCEDURES
• Day 4 - ARRAYS AND STRINGS
• Day 5 - TYPES OF YOUR OWN
• Day 6 - POINTERS AND MEMORY
• Day 7 - OBJECTS
• Day 8 - MODULES AND SCOPE
• Day 9 - WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
• Day 10 - FILES
• Day 11 - THE PREPROCESSOR
• Day 12 - TESTING AND MEASURING
• Day 13 - TALKING TO C AND THE SYSTEM
• Day 14 - ONE WHOLE PROGRAM

Who It Is For

Programmers who have written code in some language and want BASIC taught properly. Students, and anyone preparing for an examination or an interview that asks what the compiler actually does. Readers who last met BASIC as an interpreter and want the compiled one.

What It Assumes

That you have written a program before, in any language. Not C, not object-oriented programming, and no IDE: a text editor and one compiler are the whole toolchain.