NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Request for computer help.
From: Chuck Taylor
Date: 2005 Sep 6, 13:43 -0700
From: Chuck Taylor
Date: 2005 Sep 6, 13:43 -0700
--- george huxtable wrote: > This has prompted me to ask for suggestions from > list members about suitable > programs for doing simple calculations on a home > computer. George, I see that Python and JavaScript have both been recommended by others. To elaborate a bit: Python is an interpreted language as is Basic). You can download it for free from http://www.python.org/ There is documentation on line, but there are also many 3rd-party books on Python programming available through the usual sources. The nice thing about Python is that you can type in an expression and have it evaluated immediately, as you could with Basic. For example, >>> 2*5 10 To do sines and cosines, you need to tell Python to use its math library: >>> from math import * Then you can do calculations involving the trig functions: >>> sin(pi/2) 1.0 Note that, like most computer languages, it likes its angles in radians. You can also write and run Python programs, as with other languages. Basic used to be built in to your computer. JavaScript is built in to your browser (Firefox, Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.). As with Python, there are numerous books available in the marketplace on JavaScript programming. Online tutorials are also available. A simple Google seach on "javascript tutorial" will turn up many such. For an excellent example of a JavaScript program that is highly relevant to this list, see Dan Allen's "Position of the Sun" at http://216.83.138.247/S2K.htm You can see Dan's actual JavaScript code by right-clicking with your mouse anywhere on the page and selecting "View Page Source" from the popup menu. Best regards, Chuck Taylor North of Seattle, USA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com