Teaching Yourself to Program

 

George S. Young

Professor of Meteorology

 

September 21, 2007

 

 

Why program?

 

Power.  It’s that simple.  By crafting a computer program to do your drudge work, you can tackle much larger problems   Since pay goes as productivity, you earn more when you’ve got the skills to make a computer do most of your job.  Anything you have to do often enough to be bored should be programmed

 

 

Everything you need for free!

 

There are free compilers, reference manuals, and tutorials for most languages available on-line.  Just do a search on the name of your language, for example “ruby” or “octave”.  If that doesn’t turn up anything free, then search add “free” to the search, for example “fortran free”.  To find tutorials add “tutorial” to the language name, for example “octave tutorial”.

 

 

Five easy steps:

 

  1. Decide what language to learn

Fortran – for fast number crunching

Octave – for easy number crunching

Java – for programs to run on all operating systems

Ruby – for web server applications

 

  1. Download everything you need
    • Find and download a free compiler/interpreter for that language

§         gnu Fortran 95

–        installer at http://ftp.g95.org/g95-MinGW.exe

§         Octave

–        download installer from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2888

 

    • Download the reference manual so you can look up syntax details

§         gnu Fortran 95 - manual at http://ftp.g95.org/G95Manual.pdf

§         Octave – manual at http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/

 

    • Download a language specific tutorial

§         gnu Fortran 95

–        tutorial at http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/COURSES/cs201/NOTES/fortran.html

§         Octave

–        – tutorial at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Octave_Programming_Tutorial

 

    • Download the Programming Boot Camp Manual

§         http://www.ems.psu.edu/~young/meteo473/Bootcamp/

 

  1. Install the compiler or interpreter

o       gnu Fortran 95

·        installation instructions at http://www.engineering.usu.edu/cee/faculty/gurro/Software_Calculators/Fortran_g95/g95Instructions.pdf

o       Octave

·        just double-click on the installer file and answer yes to any questions it asks

 

  1. Look up how to compile and run programs

 

This should be early on in the manual and tutorial you downloaded.

 

 

  1. Work through the Programming Boot Camp Manual