Writing Code

This section covers some more mechanical issues with writing code. How is code stored? How is it executed? How do you edit it? These questions are the frustrating, tooling-immersed bretheren of the more interesting questions you'll study in your classes, but, nevertheless, they demand answering. If you've written a good amount of code before, nothing here should be surprising. If you haven't, this can serve as a reference and also a brief explanation on the more mundane steps involved in that thing we call computer programming.

Certain concepts are universal to most programming languages — these concepts are specified further in this chapter — but certain languages demand specific toolchains to run code written in those languages. The language you're using largely depends on the class you're taking. Feel free to follow the links as appropriate or simply explore:

• 121 is taught with Python.
• 221 is taught with C, C++, and Assembly.
• You will encounter other toolchains; e.g., Jupyter notebooks for Deep Learning, JS (or possibly TypeScript soon!) for graphics, and OCaml for Programming Languages. If you have toolchain questions, let us know.