Re: Beginner to programming. References to understand terms.

[steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@...>]

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 8:39 AM, Bill Kelsoe <wildbillkelsoe@gmail.com> wrote:
> Array (and associative type)
> Argument
> Calls(Function Calls)
> Constructor
> Compiler
> Class
> Chunk
> Data structure

Yes, this is the basic vocabulary of programming language concepts.
It's surprisingly hard for a non-beginner to remember their original
difficulties (often called the 'expert problem').

I did a few searches and this material is scattered all over the
place. Often the introductions make the mistake of illustrating
concepts with a whole bunch of programming languages, which is
confusing. Hitting Wikipedia all the time can be frustrating.

There's definitely a need for some introductory material here that
defines these terms informally, illustrated with Lua.

For instance, it is a little strange at first that we 'call' a
function and 'pass' it 'arguments'.