Introduction To Programming Languages; What Is A Program; What Programming Languages Do I Use - HP 7470A Operator's Manual

Introduction to Programming Languages

What Is a Program?

A program is an organized set of instructions that tells your computer
and plotter to accomplish certain tasks. There are two types of programs
that you can use
packaged software programs and user-written software programs. Pr�
packaged software programs are easy to use and usually do not require
that you have a programming background. The manual supplied with
prepackaged software is not available for your application, it will be
your prepackaged software contains complete instructions for its use. If
necessary to learn the programming languages that the computer and
plotter understand.

What Programming Languages Do I Use?

It is likely that your computer understands BASIC (Beginner's All­
purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). BASIC is a common programming
language that tells the computer what to do. Its statements are in
English, are easy to use, and perform many complex operations. These
operations include computation, data base management, and conditional
evaluation of data to control program branching.
The BASIC on some computers including some Hewlett-Packard com­
will call BASIC graphics statements. These statements often simplify
puters offers high-level graphics programming statements which we
graphics plotting and can be used in place of HP-GL (Hewlett-Packard
Graphics Language) instructions. BASIC graphics statements consist
of English words that are usually followed by numeric parameters.
These statements are encoded by the computer and then sent to the
plotter as HP-GL instructions. Each of the BASIC graphics statements
is a subroutine that will often perform tasks that would require the use
of several HP-GL instructions to duplicate. The following two programs
which produce very similar plots illustrate the economy of the BASIC
graphics statements.
generate the input data for your graphics plots: pr�
to
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