Programing first steps

[whitesa]

Do you have any advice on using JavaScript to write a converter for decimal,hexadecimal and binary.

[mpphlipot]

Whitesa,
That’s a pretty broad question you are asking and I’m not sure what kind of advice you might be looking for. I’ll take a stab at a couple areas and maybe it will help.

The algorithms for converting between various number systems like decimal, hex, binary, octal, etc, are pretty straightforward. Just about any programming language would serve that purpose. If you are already familiar with a programming language, that is certainly a good reason to go with it.

If you don’t have any programming experience, I recommend that you start with a language that someone you know (like a parent, teacher, friend) also uses. That way it will be relatively easy for you to ask questions if you get stuck. If you don’t have anyone like that on hand, Basic, Python, Ruby and Java are all typical languages that first-time programmers start with. But JavaScript wouldn’t be a bad choice, either. Whatever language you choose to go with, there are plenty of on-line tutorials that can help you get started. Just do a search on something like “Java tutorial”.

If you are asking about how to do those conversions, ehow.com has instructions for several of the conversion techniques. It doesn’t tell you how to program them, just the basic math steps to go through. It is up to you to translate those steps into the programming language of choice.

Let us know if you have any other questions. Best of luck!
Mike

[hhemken]

To echo mpphlipot, having someone knowledgeable in the language you choose is very valuable. You will always have questions. On the other hand, an advantage that javascript has is that by embedding it in a web page you have an easy way to have a graphical user interface (GUI), which is quite a lot of work otherwise. Learning javascript is a good first-language stepping stone to more industrial languages. It will also help you get a job when times are tough, and having such skills in your bag of tricks will be useful throughout your life.