Overview"This guide will quickly and easily walk complete beginners
through creating their first simple games using Phrogram. The
material is friendly and approachable to the young and to the
technologically timid alike."
--Alfred Thompson, Academic Relations Manager, Microsoft
Corporation
Different programming languages give you different ways to tell
your computer what to do. If you are just starting to program, or
even if you are an experienced programmer who likes the idea of
writing programs more easily, Phrogram offers you several important
advantages:
Phrogram makes it easy and fun to learn programming.
Phrogram is "plain language"--that is, it uses descriptive,
intuitive names, and it keeps special formatting and strange
language keywords to an absolute minimum.
Unlike other easy-to-learn languages, Phrogram is similar to
the tools that are used by professional programmers today.
Phrogram is the easiest way to do real software
development--whether or not you are a beginning programmer. This is
especially true if you want to create a game or graphical program,
although you can design just about any kind of program with
Phrogram. And you will find it quicker, more efficient, and easier
to do this in Phrogram than in any other language, because that is
what Phrogram was specifically and carefully designed to do.
If you decide to move on to professional programming, Phrogram
prepares you well for widely used professional languages like Java,
C#, or Visual Basic. Phrogram provides a complete programming
environment that is similar to these languages, but it is much
easier to master, and a lot more fun to learn and use.
What This Short Cut Covers 3
Introduction 4
Section 1: Typing and Running Your First Program in Phrogram
9
Section 2: How Your First Program Works 19
Section 3: Moving Your UFO on the Screen 30
Section 4: Bouncing Your UFO Around the Screen 44
Section 5: Keyboard Control of Your UFO 60
Section 6: Organize Your Program as It Grows 67
Section 7: UFO Escape! Your First Complete Game! 73
Section 8: Bonus Game: Pong! 95
Appendix A: Phrogram Language Examples 99
Appendix B: Glossary of Programming Terms 105
About the Authors 108
