Basic Track Summary

"Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can."
- Arthur Ashe

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To design and implement software effectively you need models of how the target platform behaves and how your program structures data and operates on it in the context of its platform. The purpose of these "Basic Bites" pages is to provide simplified bite-sized models that help you reason about consequences of the target platform and language you choose for implementation.

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Table 1. Basics Resources from this site

Resource	Contents
Basic Bites	Dozens of Bites about platform and code basics First Basic Bite
Related Content
Design Bites	A few Bites about software design First Design Bite
Deployment Bites	Bites about deployment tools and deployment processes First Deployment Bite

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Note: You can access any Basic Bites page from either the link in Table 1. or the Basic Bites Index in the header above. Or, you can access Bites from the SiteMap. Some pages have no content now, but that's coming. The code shown above on the right is a member function of a Process class used to create Windows processes and configure what happens when a process terminates. It makes calls into the Windows API accessed by #include <windows.h>. All of the tokens inside the code block are part of the Windows API, declared in Windows.h or one of the several header files it includes. After writing your first few programs, it is likely that resources in Table 2. will speed up your progress understanding and using Rust and C++. The table contains intermediate to advanced materials written in plain language.

Table 3. - Other Resources

Topic	Content
Tooling	Using Visual Studio Code to create and build C++, Rust, and C# code.
Videos	Available for C++ and Rust. Initially skip BuildOn videos. Videos are longer than optimal - planning to make shorter ones.

For more experienced developers there are a lot of language details in the Rust and C++ Stories. You can pick and choose the details you want from the Site Map. Look for the specific Story chapters and Bites and specific code repositories that interest you.

Recommended First Steps

Here's an opinionated take on getting started. If it helps, great, otherwise forge your own path.

Table 4. - Getting Started

Step	To Do
1. - Acquire Tools	In Tooling scroll to section 3. Development Process. The first row shows how to download and install tools to build C#, C++, and Rust. That works for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. Cheers!
2. - write hello world	C# - open dotnet fiddle, modify default "hello" and execute. C++ - open onlinegdb, modify default "hello" and execute. Rust - open Rust Playground, enter "hello" and execute. The first time you use the editor it will have a hello program. After that it will open with the last code you entered.
3. - probe code features	Frequently, when you look at a new type or feature of the language, use web execution engines in step 2. to try out the new thing and twist it a bit to see what happens. Save your code to clipboard [ctrl-c] and paste [ctrl-v] into a file or snippet (see step 5.)
4. - install git	download from github or download from git-scm.com git commands - Josh Hibbert git commands - git-scm git Cheat Sheet git walkthru from this site When I've changed something in a local repository I use a terminal and emit: git status git add [some things shown in status or "-A" for everything] git commit -m"[some message about the change]" - that saves locally git push origin branch - save to remote repository Here, origin identifies a remote repository [git remote add origin url] and branch is the name of a git branch [default: main, earlier default: master] Details Figure 1. Git Process
5. - open github account	If you don't already have one, open an account - it's free. You can save code you've worked on in a github code snippet. Make a snippet repository locally and save your first snippet there. Make a github snippet repository and push your local repository every time you add new code.

Now, git is widely used and essential for interacting with github - no suprise there. It takes a bit of use to find your way, but will soon become automatic for the easy things, probably 95% of what you do with git.