25 lines
1.1 KiB
Plaintext
25 lines
1.1 KiB
Plaintext
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Writing programs or programming is a very creative
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and rewarding activity You can write programs for
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many reasons ranging from making your living to solving
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a difficult data analysis problem to having fun to helping
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someone else solve a problem This book assumes that
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{\em everyone} needs to know how to program and that once
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you know how to program, you will figure out what you want
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to do with your newfound skills
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We are surrounded in our daily lives with computers ranging
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from laptops to cell phones We can think of these computers
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as our personal assistants who can take care of many things
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on our behalf The hardware in our current-day computers
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is essentially built to continuously ask us the question
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What would you like me to do next
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Our computers are fast and have vasts amounts of memory and
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could be very helpful to us if we only knew the language to
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speak to explain to the computer what we would like it to
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do next If we knew this language we could tell the
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computer to do tasks on our behalf that were reptitive
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Interestingly, the kinds of things computers can do best
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are often the kinds of things that we humans find boring
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and mind-numbing
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