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Introduction to languages

Introduction to languages: Programming Foundations: Fundamentals
Introduction to languages: Programming Foundations: Fundamentals

Introduction to Languages, as part of the Foundations of Programming course, covers some of the languages developers widely use. Simon's online video covers such basics as whether a language is object-oriented, strongly typed, and used for one specific task or many tasks at once. Learn the background of several languages and how to begin working with them via this Lynda.com JavaScript tutorial.

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Skill Level Beginner
4h 47m
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Q: Using TextEdit with Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks? 

A: If you're using the built-in TextEdit program in Mavericks to write your first examples and your code doesn't seem to be working, here's one reason why: by default, "smart quotes" are now turned on in TextEdit Preferences.
 
This is where TextEdit will automatically change pairs of double quotes to "smart quotes" - where the opening and closing quote are different, like a 66 and 99.
 
While this is fine for human eyes, programming languages don't want this - when writing code, they need to be the plain, generic straight-up-and-down quotes.
 
So make sure that in TextEdit > Preferences, that "Smart quotes" are unchecked.
 
Important! Whenever you make a change to TextEdit preferences, make sure to then completely quit out of the program (Command-Q or using TextEdit > Quit TextEdit) and then re-open it, as changes won't take effect on documents you already have open.
 
However, we're not finished - just because you've changed the preferences, it does **not** change any *existing* smart quotes back to "regular" quotes - it just doesn't add new ones - so make sure to go through your files for any time you wrote quotes and TextEdit may have changed them to smart quotes - look in both the JavaScript, and your HTML too, and compare to the downloadable exercise files if necessary.
 
If that sounds like a bit of a chore, I recommend just downloading a code editor like Sublime Text (www.sublimetext.com) or TextMate (www.macromates.com) and using that instead of TextEdit - it's only a matter of time before you'd move away from TextEdit anyway - we only used it in the course because it was built-in and a quick way to get started, but it's now become more of a inconvenience than it was before.

Skills covered in this course
Developer Programming Foundations Web

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