Beginning Ring Programming: From Novice to Professional

✍ Scribed by Mansour Ayouni

• Publisher: Apress
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 678
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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 classes
• Carry out structural, object-oriented, functional, declarative, natural, and meta programming in Ring
• Use the full power of Ring to refactor program code and develop clean program architectures
• Quickly 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

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