Take Up Code

Working with individual bits does not just give you a way to pack lots of true or false values into a small space. This episode will show you how to isolate bits so you can work with them individually or in groups. This is called masking.

Are strings also a collection? And how are characters represented?

Hexadecimal gives you a better way to represent binary numbers. In one of the very early episodes, I explained how bytes are composed of eight bits. On some platforms, a byte might actually be more than eight bits. The real problem though is even eight bits are hard to read. The zeros and ones blend together. Hexadecimal allows you to work with four bits at a time and is much easier to read.

The preprocessor is old, primitive, and strong. But you need to understand its strengths to use it effectively. It adds capabilities that the C++ compiler cannot come close to duplicating on its own.

Chaining is a common term that has several different meanings. This episode explains how you can use chaining in your programs and how it works.

Programming languages have a lot of operators. More than most calculators anyway. Do you know what they are? Did you know there is an order to them? This episode explains precedence, associativity, and evaluation order.

What types of programmers are there?

Iterators give you the ability to navigate from one item to another in a collection and track a specific position within a collection. This episode is part two and continues describing even more advanced iterator topics.

Iterators give you the ability to navigate from one item to another in a collection. Why is this so special? Now that you know how to work with various collections, you know that they are structured very differently. An array just needs to move a pointer to the next item. A list needs to follow wherever the next pointer leads. A binary tree needs to go up and down the tree. Iterators give you a common way to navigate no matter what kind of collection you are using.

You will need to be able to work with groups or collections of items. You have choices and this episode continues more than a week long exploration of collection types available. Up today is the dictionary. I will explain what dictionaries are and then give you some guidance on when to use them.