Thoughts on Challenge #2
For this challenge I figured we could dive into some actual code and get everyone’s feet wet.
In Thoughts on Challenge #1 I talked about the need for instructions to be written in a specific way or else it might be produce different results from what was expected.
The code sample provided in the challenge demonstrated this a little bit.
On Question 1
Do you notice anything a little off about the code’s output in relation to the actual lines of code? And whatever you are noticing, why do you think it’s doing that?
90% of the participants noticed that there was some difference in the commands being used in the lines of code. In this case, Console.WriteLine() specifically printed out the text AND added a new line while Console.Write() did not. It’s a minor difference but it does illustrate the need to be a specific.
And just for shiz and giggles, I threw in \n in there which is an escape character and an alternate way to produce a new line.
On Question 2
Now pick any of the lines that has a semicolon at the end and remove the semicolon. Click the “Run” button to run the updated code. What happened? Why do you think it’s doing that?
As everyone observed, the program threw an error because it requires you to write your instructions in a certain format a.k.a. syntax.
In this case, the syntax requires that you end your individual instructions with a semicolon, much like how we end our sentences with a period.
Syntax is something that all languages have such as this English language you are reading. Speaking of languages, you may have noticed that the code sample looked a little bit like English, but kind of not.
That’s because the program was written in a high-level programming language called C# which was designed to be more human readable, but still follows a syntax that a computer can interpret (even now, normal English is still really hard for computers to understand —just talk to Siri for reference).
On Question 3
How could lines 7 to 12 have been written in one line?
There was a little bit of misintepretation from this question but some participants identified one way of condensing the code into one line by using \n (scroll to the right to see the entire thing)
1 | Console.WriteLine("Hello, fellow coder!\n Thanks for participating in these challenges.\n I was aiming for these challenges to only take about 10-15 minutes.\n It is a work in progress so sorry if the first one took longer!\n I hope to keep seeing you on the next challenges."); |
But another way of condensing the code into one line is by literaly just putting all of them in one line.
1 | Console.WriteLine("Hello, fellow coder!"); Console.WriteLine("Thanks for participating in these challenges."); Console.Write("I was aiming for these challenges to only take about 10-15 minutes."); Console.Write("It is a work in progress so sorry if the first one took longer!\n"); Console.Write("I hope to keep seeing you on the next challenges."); |
This still works because as you learned in Question 2, the syntax for C# only needs a semicolon to distinguish between instructions. However, I do not recommend that you ever write code this way since it’s much less readable.
Bonus Fact
A long time ago people had to write programs in a low-level programming language called Assembly where an equivalent Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!") would look something like this.
1 | mov dx, msg |
Count your blessings we don’t have to code in that anymore :)