Speaking Geek

If I asked you to tell me or a friend what this greeting program does, you would say something like:

The program has two buttons and a text output area. The program greets the user when he or she clicks the "greet" button and it clears the greeting when the user clicks the "clear" button.

That is an external description of what the program does, and it is written in a natural language: English.

If a programmer wanted to talk about the program -- either in explaining it to another programmer or in planning it before writing it -- he or she would not use colloquial English, but would use the precise technical language we are learning to use in this course: Geek.

English The program has a button that says "Greet".
Geek There is an instance of the class Button in the user interface of this program, and the value of its Text property is "Greet".

Or

English The greeting area is blank to start with.
Geek The initial value of the Text property of the Textbox is "".

(An empty character string, "", can be referred to as having a null value).

This is awkward now, because you are not used to thinking in Geek. A major goal of this class is to make you fluent in this precise new language.

The best way to learn this new Geek language is to use it. Don't passively listen to it or read it, but try to use it. To learn a language, you must actively speak and write using it. Like a child learning a new language, you will make mistakes at first, but at some point, Geek will become second nature to you.

You will know that you have arrived when you start using Geek to describe things other than programs. Only other programmers will know what you are talking about -- you will be an insider -- a geek.

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