M2
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Documentation of the overall language
@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')