----------------------------------- UBC_Wiskatos Mon Jun 30, 2003 6:57 pm New to Turing (C++/Assembly Programmer) ----------------------------------- Hello there, Next year I will be taking a Grade 11 Computer Science course at my local high school. From what I understand, the teacher will be teaching Turing in the course, with Java being Grade 12. I had not heard much of Turing up to that point, and I've found this board and I hope someone could help me prepare for it. I looked at some of the syntax, and it looks quite verbose and easy, however I would like to know some specifics. I've been programming in C/C++ for the past 4 or so years, as well as x86 Assembly (not much, just enough to optimize some functions) and Visual Basic. I usually use the Win32 API (not MFC or OWL) and the DirectX API (DirectDraw so far), and have made quite a number of games and programs. I've also done some (I emphesize, some) AI programming in Lisp. Anyways, the main questions I have about Turing are the following: Does Turing use its own graphics system or does it access the Windows GDI or what? Does Turing pass automatically ByRef (à la Java) or ByVal (ouch), and does it have the equivalent of pointers? I hear Turing is OO, so how does it stand on polymorphism, operator overloading, abstract classes, virtual functions, etc.? Can Turing access DLLs? So say, if I wrote a DirectX wrapper (or perhaps accessed DirectX itself) for Turing, could I access it? How is Turing on speed? Does it compile or is it interpreted? If Turing can't do any of this, what kind of features does it graphics library have? I mean, has anyone attempted to create a 3D renderer with it, or is this futile (speed-wise). I already have a software 3D renderer in C++, and I'd be interested in porting it to Turing for my final project :D Is it possible to use assembly within Turing? How is the code structure in Turing? Do you have headers and then the main file? Resource files? Is there a preprocessor? Is there a free compiler for Turing? Thank you very much to anyone who can answer at least some of these questions! Learning a new language always excites me, and I'm very interested in using Turing to its full potential, just would like to know what I can expect! ----------------------------------- Catalyst Mon Jun 30, 2003 7:05 pm ----------------------------------- Welcome to the site, dont expect too much from turing tho turing uses its own system (altho underneath its the winGDI) no pointers, but you can do byref and by value all of the OO stuff is there except operator overloading (you can also fake abstract classes) cant access dlls hybrid compiler-interpreter, slow as hell its gfx library is small it lets points, lines, shapes, bmps a 3d engine is possible(i have one posted in source), but speed limitations will keep the poly count low (