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Documentation of the overall language

Open DanGrayson opened this issue 5 years ago • 0 comments

@michaelaburr - Michael Burr suggests additional introductory material about the Macaulay2 language be added to the documentation to make it easier for newcomers, especially for those knowing C:

  • an introductory section about the overall syntactical structure of the language
    • everything is an expression, there are no statements
    • list processing is important; there are also hash tables
    • the class hierarchy is present and important
    • method functions versus compiled functions
    • classes don't own methods, methods for binary operators are stored in the youngest type
    • all objects are on an equal footing (everything has a hash code and can be used as a key in a hash table) (everything has a class and a parent)
    • some operators are mathematical and some are oriented toward low-level tasks
  • in the section on classes
    • how to explore existing objects in the system (peek, peek')

DanGrayson avatar May 15 '20 13:05 DanGrayson